'We bonded over kaya toast and kopi': SG60 film Kopitiam Days premieres with 14 cast members and President Tharman in attendance, Entertainment News

AsiaOne

21 hours ago

SG60 film Kopitiam Days held its gala premiere last evening (Aug 5) at The Sands Theatre at Marina Bay Sands with its six directors and 14 cast members.
President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Ms Jane Ittogi also graced the event with Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo and Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Tan Kiat How.
Local director Eric Khoo, who serves as the film's creative director and executive producer, said at the event that the inspiration for the film came to him one morning while he was having a local breakfast.
"I was eating my soft-boiled eggs and drinking my kopi-o kosong (black coffee without sugar) and I thought I want to treat myself to something special for Singapore, and so we assembled these amazing directors to come onboard," the 60-year-old shared, adding that it's his "gift" to the nation.
Kopitiam Days is an anthology which features Singapore in the past, present and future. While each of the six stories are independent, the kopitiam Heap Seng Leong — a real coffeeshop located at North Bridge Road — is a familiar place in all the characters' lives.
The movie opens with director Yeo Siew Hua's Dragon Gate Assembly, which is an action-packed love story set in the kopitiam in 1975 that serves as a tribute to the wuxia genre and ode to the heartland uncles and aunties. It stars Richie Koh, Xenia Tan, Tay Ping Hui, Chen Tianwen, Douglas Kung and Tang Fu Kuen.
Siew Hua said during event that the inspiration came from his love for the wuxia genre: "I was thinking, what if I mix the idea of a kopitiam and inn... the idea is that there are always very interesting characters that appear in the inn [in wuxia stories], and just like in our kopitiam where there are many interesting characters — rich and poor and old and young — so I think putting the two together kind of makes sense to me."
Xenia, 30, who plays coffeeshop assistant Ling Ling, talked about the positive vibe on set. "I think the most memorable moments would be all the funny scenes, trying to hold my laughter, because I think Tianwen is a natural and Richie is really good with comedy. So, acting alongside him, the toughest part of my job is controlling my laughter and not having NG (no-good takes)."
Richie plays Ling Ling's love interest Lim, and the 32-year-old shared that while they rehearsed most of the scenes before filming, they improvised a lot in the end when the cameras rolled.
Ping Hui, whose character visits the kopitiam to hunt down Lim, said that while filming was done overnight in warm Singapore weather, he enjoyed the process of it.
"If you watch it, you will realise that it's a very distinct kind of humour and it's the first time I'm doing something like this, so it was very interesting," the 54-year-old added.
The second film in the anthology is director Shoki Lim's Meet Me At The Pavilion, which centres on Hainanese opera actress Chen Aihua (Hong Huifang) finding self-confidence and the possibility of romance with Mr Li (Zhu Houren) through opera in modern-day Singapore.
Shoki shared that the story was inspired by his Hainanese relatives who were opera singers and one of his aunts served as a consultant for the opera performances in the short film.
Huifang, 64, said about her experience: "I realised there's actually a difference between speaking Hainanese and performing in Hainanese and it's really not easy, so there's a need for [Shoki's aunt] to help in articulation."
Director M. Raihan Halim's IZ-1 features an elderly woman (Zaliha Hamid) navigating life and relationship with her daughter Hannah (Siti Khalijah) in 2035 when the latter bought an android caregiver with the titular name to care for her.
About the film, Raihan said: "It's a love letter to two women in my life, my mum and my grandma. They are getting older and it's very hard to actually convince them to have a helper or someone to stay home with them. And I thought, what if it's not human? Maybe they'll accept it as opposed to a human being, and the idea of a robot came to me."
Siti, 40, shared the theme of the story resonates with her, as she is also living with her mum and her helper: "In terms of the mother-and-daughter relationship, the clashes that they have and their moments of connection, they're all very relatable to me."
The anthology continues with director Tan Siyou's Red Plastic Chairs on Sticky Floors, which follows young Singaporean filmmaker Christina Goh (Iris Li) who works in the Netherlands and begin to miss home while working on sound design for her latest project.
The short focuses on Christina trying to capture familiar and distinctive sounds — such as plastic chairs scraping on the floor — heard in a kopitiam. Siyou said at the event: "I think the film is about listening and about sounds and so that's why we pulled back on the dialogue to give it a bit more atmosphere and the sounds of the environment."
Director Don Aravind's One Last Song is inspired by the 1986 Hotel New World tragedy and tells the story of forbidden and everlasting love between Michael (Stephen Zechariah) and Latha (Keerthana) that persists after unspeakable loss.
Don shared: "I think when we talked about SG60, the common theme that we all resonate with is home and of course, what is closest to home is love, so this film encompasses that."
The film comes full circle with director Ong Kuo Sin's The Morning Call, which centres on the blossoming relationship between May (Jennifer Wilkinson) and her grandfather Lim (Yang Shi Bin) when she returns to Singapore with her mother Chui Hoon (Yvonne Lim) and accidentally loses her grandfather's orange payphone from his kopitiam.
Yvonne said the film resonated a lot with her as she had just returned to Singapore this January after living in Taipei for a decade with her family.
The 48-year-old added: "It's so much fun and even though it was a short period of filming, we bonded somehow, we bonded over kaya toast and kopi, so this is a very local [experience] for us and it's an honour to be part of this SG60 film."
Kopitiam Days will be released through community screenings and on streaming platforms.
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