Amoeba
Inspired by her own strictly controlled upbringing in Singapore, Siyou Tan created a comic coming-of-age drama about four girls at an elite girls’ school who start a secret gang.
Sixteen-year-old tomboy Choo Xin Yu seems like a misfit when she joins a highly competitive, elite all-girls school in Singapore. But she quickly befriends three others who share her rebellious nature. While the girls struggle to fit in, they pledge loyalty to each other and vow to start a gang as a form of resistance. When their rebellious acts – recorded by the girls on a camcorder – are discovered by their teacher, their lives are upended.
Singapore is a melting pot of Western and Eastern cultures, its famous half-fish, half-lion Merlion mascot perfectly representing the duality of this city-state. Despite its open-minded and multicultural façade, it is also a place with strict rules that are diligently followed by its conformist population. Sprinkled throughout Amoeba are subtle symbols best understood within their cultural context. Something seemingly innocent, like chewing gum for example, becomes an act of rebellion. The only way the girls find liberation is within the confines of a camcorder screen.
Siyou Tan’s debut feature is a profound exploration of paradoxical challenges that present themselves in our quest to establish community, identity, personal autonomy, and individuality. (source: www.tiff.net)