"Ah Girl" Wins Best Film at Singapore Film Festival

Singaporean filmmaker Ang Geck Geck's debut feature, "Ah Girl," has been awarded best film in the Asian Feature Film Competition at the Singapore International Film Festival's (SGIFF) Silver Screen Awards. This marks a significant achievement for Ang, whose film was workshopped at the festival's Southeast Asian Film Lab in 2015.

"Ah Girl" tells the story of a seven-year-old girl in 1990s Singapore whose parents have separated. The film previously garnered attention by winning the Youth Jury Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The SGIFF ceremony also recognized Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat with the best director award for her film "No Good Men."

The best performance prize was split, with Pushpa Thing Lama honored for "Elephants in the Fog" and Putri Marino for "Four Seasons in Java." Japanese director Nagahisa Makoto's "Burn" received the Special Jury Prize. In the short film categories, Arief Budiman's "Golden Island" won best Southeast Asian short, and Berthold Wahjudi took the shorts Special Jury Prize for "'Vaterland' or A Bule Named Yanto."