Singaporean filmmaker Ang Geck Geck Priscilla’s debut feature Ah Girl has won Best Asian Feature Film in the Asian Feature Film Competition at the 37th Singapore International Film Festival’s Silver Screen Awards, held on October 31. The 99-minute drama follows a seven-year-old girl navigating her parents’ separation in 1990s Singapore. The win carries special significance for the filmmaker, as the project was first developed at SGIFF’s Southeast Asian Film Lab in 2015, more than a decade before it returned to the festival to claim its top Asian feature prize.
Ah Girl draws heavily on Ang Geck Geck Priscilla’s own childhood. In an interview, the filmmaker said that most of the story was based on her life, although some scenes were imagined or shaped by conversations within her family. Set in 1994, the film follows its young protagonist as she tries to make sense of the changes taking place at home. It offers an intimate perspective on family separation through a child’s eyes, staying close to the girl’s point of view and allowing audiences to discover the family’s tensions as she does. Ang wanted children to feel seen and heard through the story.
The film took years to reach production. Ang spent approximately a decade developing the project and has spoken about the difficulty of finding support for a story so closely connected to her own experiences. She pitched it to almost every producer in Singapore and came close to giving up. The 2015 workshop at SGIFF gave the screenplay an early platform, but turning it into a feature film required considerable patience and persistence.
This connection with the festival makes the Best Asian Feature Film award particularly meaningful. SGIFF was part of the film’s journey before production began, and the same festival has now recognised the completed work. The win also follows another significant achievement on its international festival run: Ah Girl received the Youth Jury Award at the 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Young performers Ong Xuan Jing and Sydney Wong lead the film as Ah Girl and her younger sister, Ah Tian. Their performances place the emotional weight of the story on two children, making them central to how audiences experience the family’s changing circumstances. Sydney Wong was four years old during filming, while Ong Xuan Jing’s work has since received recognition beyond the festival circuit.
At the 63rd Golden Horse Awards, Ah Girl has received three nominations: Best New Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ang Geck Geck Priscilla, and Best New Performer for Ong Xuan Jing. The nominations add to the film’s growing recognition following its festival success.
Ang also had to make difficult decisions while shaping the final cut. One sequence she was particularly reluctant to remove was an elaborate wedding scene, which was among the production’s most expensive. Following her editor’s advice, she eventually cut the sequence to protect the film’s pacing and preserve the mystery surrounding its characters. The decision reflects the choices involved in balancing a filmmaker’s original vision with the demands of the finished film.
Ang has also spoken about the possibility of continuing Ah Girl‘s story through further films, following the character as she moves through adolescence and into adulthood. While no further instalments have been confirmed, the filmmaker’s interest in revisiting the character suggests that the world established in the debut feature could have room for further exploration.
For now, the Silver Screen Awards win marks a defining achievement for Ang Geck Geck Priscilla’s feature debut. A project first brought to SGIFF as a screenplay has returned as an award-winning film, carrying memories drawn from the filmmaker’s own childhood to audiences well beyond Singapore.