Chen, Yeo Yann Yann Reflect on Trilogy, Unveil 'Sunset
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- Anthony Chen spoke at Shanghai International Film Festival masterclass alongside Yeo Yann Yann, reflecting on 14 years of the 'Growing Up' trilogy — 'Ilo Ilo,' 'Wet Season,' and 'We Are All Strangers' — together with actor Koh Jia Ler forming what the two called a 'cinema family.'
- Yeo Yann Yann revealed she was suffering postpartum depression during 'Wet Season,' saying it 'almost crushed me, almost making it impossible for me to live on' — and that Chen had rewritten the lead role in 'Ilo Ilo' to accommodate her pregnancy.
- 'Sunset Park' is Chen's new Korean-English film, co-written with a Korean writer over roughly two years, described as 'a comic take on a tragic story' about a Korean father and his son's roommate traveling in the U.S.
- 'We Are All Strangers,' the trilogy's final installment, premiered in competition at the Berlinale earlier this year, following two Singapore families — strangers who become kin.
- Chen is serving this year as head of the Shanghai Asian new talents jury and urged emerging filmmakers to shoot roughly 10 short films before attempting a feature, as he did.
- Hou Hsiao-hsien's advice to Chen — 'What you didn't shoot won't be in the film' — frames Chen's directing philosophy that 'a lot of times, what I am directing is the breathing and pauses.'
Why it matters: Yeo's disclosure is a rare public reckoning with how postpartum depression nearly ended her career and how a director's flexibility preserved it. Chen's 'Sunset Park' extends his found-family theme across Korean and English, positioning the Singaporean auteur as a cross-cultural voice with a Berlinale credit and a Shanghai jury seat in the same year.
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