Siyou Tan’s debut feature, Amoeba, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival under its Discovery section, introducing a fresh and candid new voice in Singaporean cinema. Billed as a coming-of-age film, Amoeba raises a defiant finger to the institutions and ideologies of control that have, since time immemorial, shaped generations of students and teenagers in Singapore. As its four central protagonists band together to form a gang, they come to appreciate not just the symbolic weight of disobedience, but also the bittersweet fact that gangs — especially for an academically bright bunch of goody two shoes — just aren’t a thing in an era without overt cause for rebellion.
A U.S.-based filmmaker, Tan has previously examined the painful and often paradoxical facets of Singaporean identity, with her short films Hello Ahma (2019) and Strawberry Cheesecake (2021) centered respectively around a young girl mourning her grandmother’s passing and a group of rebellious schoolgirls. Amoeba, though cast from the same mold as the latter, evolves into a more piercing and vulnerable reflection on the challenging expressions of girlhood under a system that downplays difference. Sensitive to both nostalgic imagination and contemporary reality, the film surveys a Singapore considerably different from its swashbuckling myths, but still longing for the youth and exuberance of the deep blue sea.
In Review Online also reviewed Amoeba as part of our Toronto 2025 coverage, and on the occasion of the film’s world premiere, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tan over Zoom.
Being a product myself of Singapore’s education system, I must say Amoeba speaks to me on a personal level, even though I never was a girl in a girls’ school. Given how your film questions the notion of conformity, I wanted to hear your thoughts on the issue of gangsterism in Singapore, especially in the 21st century, when it seems like secret societies and real gangs have more or less disappeared with better policing and a broader cultural shift away from hooliganism. I also wanted to ask if and how your conception of the film evolved from its inception to the final product.
It’s nice to hear that the film speaks to you about Singapore’s education system. I guess this is a very big question you have here, because it’s also something I’ve been wrestling with since day one of trying to write the script. And the gangsterism thing — I’m just going to talk about the film through this lens. When I started the film, there were four things: the title, girls, gangsters, and ghosts. I think gangsters have been something that I’ve really wrestled with in the writing. Firstly, I grew up in a generation where there were not that many gangsters because of the ’70s and the ’80s, when the government had all these draconian laws which could pretty much lead to detention without trial. And so I grew up with the Far East [Plaza] and Bugis gangsters, and we tended to all hang out in the same places. I hate to use this term, but I was from a so-called “better school.” So there’s really a big separation between us and them, which only made me more fascinated with these so-called gangsters. I wanted to hang out with them, but you know, sometimes we tried and they would rebuff us and reject us. When I was growing up too, there was this gang song, the Salakau song, which is still part of our Singaporean pop culture. But while all of us were getting into it, our parents and teachers got so freaked out, especially because of the mere mention of “gang.” And so that stayed with me as a teenager.
Secondly, I don’t know why, but I just wanted to make a film about girls forming a gang. The whole writing process has thus been very refreshing, because you realize at some point that Singapore isn’t Brazil or Compton; it’s not like a lot of countries where violence is rampant. Singapore is its own thing. It’s relatively prosperous now. And the gangsters have been eradicated; even when I was researching them, I couldn’t find much because they’re not recorded and they’ve all disappeared. In that way, Amoeba isn’t about the girls doing violent things. It’s not about them selling drugs or beating people up. It’s not realistic. Furthermore, these are girls from an elite school, so they won’t do that. So I think in my formulation of the film, I realized that gangsterism, when traced back to its roots, is actually a rebellious group in China, like the saying “反清复明”: formed during the Qing dynasty to go against the presiding authority and to bring the Ming dynasty back.
I thought that was very interesting because they’re more akin to rebels; and Sun Yat-sen and all these historical figures were gangsters, which is crazy to me. And then I started to see, being a Singaporean away from Singapore and also having gone to a Chinese school, that Confucianism is a very strong subliminal element of control in Singaporean society, not just the Chinese-speaking but also the English-speaking parts, everything. I also realized that in Singapore, capitalism, conformity, and gangsterism all drink from the same well, which is this element of Confucianism which controls and regulates your behavior. In gangs, they have certain codes that they follow like loyalty and brotherhood. In Chinese schools, they have all these kinds of models as well: almost every school in Singapore has four words that you’re supposed to abide by. But essentially, it’s all for control and conformity, for you to not go against hierarchy and to stay in your place and serve a larger purpose.
And then I knew that my film wasn’t going to be about the girls becoming gangsters, doing typical gang things in movies. It’s not about drugs, sex, whatever. The motivation to form a gang is for them to have some agency over their lives, for them to be able to make their own decisions about the future.
I also picked up on this while watching Amoeba, that it’s not a movie about gangsters. It’s really more about people trying to roleplay as gangsters — gangster wannabes. But as you pointed out, this just isn’t a feasible way of life in Singapore. The parallel you draw between the gangsters and institutional Confucianism, in addition, paints quite a pessimistic view of the capacity for teenagers to cultivate any real sense of individuality.
The word “cosplay” was on my mind too! These kids are cosplaying as men, as gangsters, as one another as well.
On this note, I noticed that Amoeba is almost entirely set in an elite Chinese girls’ school, and in some ways it doesn’t quite capture the underbelly of Singapore — and nor does it purport to. And given how much of its characters are motivated by questions of academic and broader success, and not disobeying what’s laid out for them, to what extent do you think elitism fosters a sense of insularity, especially within ethnic and socio-economic groups?
This is a very good question and also something I thought about. I would say that elitism here has to be thought of in a Singaporean context. It’s definitely on my mind because I went to a Chinese (and relatively elite) school. And when I went to junior college and then overseas and then started working, I was like, what the fuck? I hadn’t been exposed to the real world at all; I was really secluded in this stupid little bubble. And at least in my school, we had different socioeconomic backgrounds, but racially it was almost homogenous. It never crossed my mind as a young person that there were such divisions and that it was not normal that I was among only Chinese people. It was also not normal how these schools start you on the rat race from so young. There’s all this pressure from everyone; it’s not just your parents, it’s your friends and your friends’ parents and your aunts and uncles telling you that the golden ticket for life starts at 12 years old, that you need to go to these good schools and get a good job and make loads of money.
When you try to write and make a film, you have to focus on certain things. And I definitely registered how my story largely centered around Chinese people and wasn’t representative of Singapore. But then I decided that because it’s a Chinese school and because I went to a Chinese school, that would be my parameters of the world, and I was going to explore how this Chineseness is very limiting. And because my parents are also Chinese (my mom’s from China), I found it fascinating to see how their narratives and identity are forced upon us. Such as when we had to recite Chinese proverbs at dinner and listen to their warnings against mingling with other races — their fear of the Other — this marker of identity becomes very limiting. When you are young, you mostly accept these narratives, but they are not true and not really for your happiness. Maybe your happiness is something else; it’s not in being a Chinese person.
One thing I really enjoyed about the film is the presence of many unspoken things within. And one of these things pertains to the question of the return of the repressed, especially with the phenomenon of the ghost. It’s a delightfully ambiguous thing: you could call it a metaphor, you could call it literal. But the idea is that the ghost is some kind of foil to Choo’s [Ranice Tay] happiness. We never really get a sense of what it is or what actually happens with it. We only see the ghost on two occasions: during Choo’s introduction in class, when she reveals her trouble sleeping at night, and when she and Vanessa [Nicole Lee Wen] are in her room and its presence coincides with something a bit more implied and homoerotic. I wanted to hear your thoughts on the idea of repression in Singapore, both sexually as well as in the things left unsaid. How did you imagine audiences would perceive the ghost? Would it have been a completely different film without the ghost?
As I said, gangsterism was one thing that I wrestled with, and the ghost was another, especially while I was writing and attending these film labs. And it’s interesting because I think ghosts are a quite normal part of our Singaporean life. There were people in the labs that definitely did not understand it: most of the time, the Europeans would think it was purely metaphorical, but I say it’s real, the ghost is real. I did not want to take it out of the film, even though it was really difficult to write it in and find the balance between “it’s a real thing you cannot see” and a kind of figurative element to it. And I didn’t want to take it out because there was a ghost in my childhood bedroom. It fucking terrified me; I was so scared the first time it happened, but when I told my mom she just said there was no such thing in our house. She completely erased my fear. And that was a moment, a turning point for me personally, when I went to school and told my friend about it and then one friend told another, and soon the whole class was there trying to comfort me. That was a time when I realized that even though my parents would try to be there for me, they hear only what they want to hear and the things they don’t want to hear, they erase. Friends are great, however.
Anyway, that’s a digression. As for the ghost, I don’t know whether you’ve encountered ghosts in your life, but I sometimes definitely feel a presence. I cannot see it, but I can feel it. It’s very strong and I know it’s real, but I cannot see it. And I think this creates a very strange reality that upends the idea of you trusting everything you see. I wanted to create this feeling. I also found the ghost useful as a way to talk about the suppression in Singapore, because when I was growing up in this kind of society, I felt I had to suppress many, many things. With my family, you had to suppress a lot of things and portray only what they want you to portray, otherwise you get punished. In school, it’s the same thing. And as an adult, looking at Singapore, I see this is something that goes from the top — the government, the state, the institutions, whatever — all the way down to the family unit. It’s a kind of violence because you erase yourself.
This suppression, of course, also evokes buried desire, queer desire. The ghost was something to connect Choo and Vanessa in a way that emphasizes the mystery of their attraction. Their attraction is linked by something mysterious because chemistry and attraction itself are completely mysterious to me. How do you define it? When it happens it’s marvelous and mysterious and amazing. This attraction between Choo and Vanessa: it blossoms and they try and use ghost-hunting as an excuse, but in the end, it gets buried and suppressed.
I like how the shot cuts to Choo smelling Vanessa’s swimming jacket: a blink-and-miss detail which is a very nice way of articulating what you wanted to say about their relationship. How do you think people will identify with the film, whether it’s an international or Singaporean audience? I’m wondering if some people, especially kids and youngsters today, might view the scenes at school — this punitive atmosphere and fixation on respect for authority — and think them exaggerated. Teachers and parents, some would say, are generally more lax today, partly because they can’t control all aspects of student life when phones and social media are so ubiquitous. The characters in Amoeba also have recourse to online platforms; even the camera they use, though not exactly online, is removed from reality and presents a recording mechanism that prior generations didn’t always have. But in a way this goes to show that the government has already won, because people no longer feel the need to challenge authority using these old, conventional ways of rebelling. I wonder what your thoughts are on how younger people today will respond to your film and its potential for subversion.
I think even though I’m making this film from my perspective and I’m obviously not a young teen anymore, there are a few things. First, I made a short film called Strawberry Cheesecake and I did a very extensive casting and I talked to many, many, many young girls. This sounds very weird. [laughs] I talked to many young people about expectations and pressures and everything. And I discovered that sure, they have phones, they can put on makeup, they can wear frilly things, but the feeling is the same. They feel suffocated. They feel they cannot choose their own paths, and they feel that there’s an invisible hand controlling their lives and they really want to break out of it. And whether or not they can is something they have to wrestle with.
During the film’s production, I had a production designer from the Philippines and I wanted to give her some context on Singaporean schools, and we managed to get access to my old secondary school. We went in there and it was very interesting because things change, you know; attitudes are a little bit looser, and we talked to the discipline mistresses and of course they joked about how they used to sell us bras as though nothing happened, as though it didn’t traumatize us. And they were like “oh, you know, now we don’t even need to be so authoritative anymore because students don’t break the rules.” Hearing this, a chill went up my spine. I was like, okay, they don’t break the rules. So the self-policing is on; they’re so well-behaved that there is no need for any kind of punishment.
And that was very scary because at least for my generation, most people toed the line, but there’s a bunch of us that would go, that is so stupid, why do we need to do that? You know, and we could do that. It became a little game: I fight you, you fight me. We know we have to get good results at the end of the day, but let me just express what I feel and tell you how fucked up it all is. And maybe it could challenge your policies and make you think about more humane ways of dealing with stuff. But self-policing is really scary: we let you have a little bit of longer hair and it doesn’t need to be as strict as before, but you don’t get to do all these other things. What I understood was the students were all really terrified of failing and they all really wanted to do well in school. And that was the overall thing that drove them into not misbehaving.
These are just little snippets and observations on youths today, and I think the online space they’re in is very interesting because the Internet has always been this ambivalent tool. As a young person, I loved the Internet. I talked to all sorts of people online and I learned many things, and I also found other misfits internationally and my world opened up. I was chatting with people until really late. And I think the camera, exactly what you said, also relates to the ghost because these things that are recorded, they’re not really in reality, you know; it’s not seen, but it’s seen. And I feel that the online space is very powerful for young people, especially so in Singapore because you cannot do much with traditional media. The Internet however is very open and liberating, though there are all these safeguards now, all these laws to maintain safety. Safety is always the narrative: we want you to be safe, so you relinquish your privacy and we can control what you see, which I think is not great. But also with the world at large, with everything going on in Gaza for instance, all these big platforms are censoring it and not allowing you to say things. So yes, I think the Internet is a free and open place and maybe there need to be certain safeguards because honestly there are some scary things out there like QAnon. But at the same time, who gets to control it? Who are the people in power who control the narrative?
And on the question of how I think audiences will respond to the film, I’m hoping Singaporeans will respond well because it’s, I guess, a very prickly little love letter to the country. But even though I live abroad, I feel very, very much tied to Singapore and I’m very, very close to Singapore’s issues and my friends in Singapore. And so I hope it’s not just about nostalgia, it’s not just about secondary school. At the same time, I want to make a subversive film in Singapore, but I don’t want it to be censored. I don’t want it to be in trouble. I want people to see it. So in a way, I have to disguise the subversion through this coming-of-age narrative. But I think the big subversion here is questioning the national narrative and the Great Man narrative about our founding fathers and everything. These people who have roads named after them, where did you get your money from? What did you do to gain that much power? And why is history not about the actual lived histories of ordinary people but about the history of these great people?
There are many things that I hope a Singaporean audience can take from it, but I think internationally, I’ve talked to people and I edited the film in Paris and people have really responded to it. And while the film is ultimately very specific about its context, there are certain things that really resonate universally: it’s about systems, it’s about institutions, it’s about the violence in these spaces, and it’s about the erasure and erosion of your individuality, which happens in every country. Because every country to some extent, every leader, wants to control its people, for them to live their lives according to what the authorities see fit. The military is a good example of this kind of institution, where you have to give up your individuality to do something. And so I think it’s about systems of repression, which in more liberal countries you might not realize are repressive. But I think, especially in the United States, people are realizing this now, with the far-right coming back.
In some ways, the act of making this film is just like you reliving your teenage years of subversion — you’re trying to express something that hasn’t been expressed for a long time. Much of Amoeba, too, explores the idea of having spaces for creative expression as the girls attempt to articulate through songs, chants, and blood oaths anything and everything, their romantic desires, their personal identity, and all that. I’m sure you’ve heard about the insolvency and closure of The Projector [one of Singapore’s most popular independent cinemas], which if anything confirms the difficulty of sustaining avenues for creativity and artistic expression in the country. How would you, being based in the U.S., describe your relationship with Singapore and how does this relationship come through in your work?
The Projector’s closure was very sad for me because it only opened after I went to the United States. But whenever I’m back in Singapore — I’ve been back more because of the film and work, and also because I don’t have a full-time job — I would go to The Projector a lot. And I found this space in Singapore where cinephiles can gather and it made me feel that okay, Singapore is actually kind of livable and kind of cool. And when it closed, I was devastated. My relationship with Singapore, I think, is complicated. I feel it’s a bit hard for me to live in Singapore; whenever I go back, I live with my parents, and it’s not always pleasant, as an adult with an independent life, to return to live under your parents’ authoritarian thumb. I see myself as an overseas Singaporean yearning and thinking about home all the time. My work is always about Singapore. It wrestles with all these experiences from a formative time in my life.
And even though I live in the U.S., I’m not an American. I’m not even Asian American. I’m a Singaporean living here, and I love it, it’s pretty great. But at the same time, I think where those formative years are concerned I’m still very connected to Singapore. I read all the news, I talk to my friends, I know what’s going on. I even know that the stall selling eggs near my place in Toa Payoh closed. Singapore is tricky — and it makes me sad — because every time I go back, all my favorite places close. And this new shiny whatever opened and this chain store opened and it’s like, what is this, where’s the culture? And sometimes I feel like maybe because I’m away, I cannot access the culture. I’m not so plugged in. But at the same time, I do see that there is a closure of a lot of things, and it’s not that the government needs to support these things, but in other countries at least, I think there are certain laws that protect cultural spaces.
A quick question on the cave scenes in the film: were they shot in Singapore or elsewhere?
Elsewhere — the Philippines.
Yeah, I was wondering how on earth you managed to get into one in Singapore; I would like to go if you did.
Well, you’re not allowed to. We really, really tried as well. I wrote a letter to the relevant Member of Parliament, and I went to every single influential person I knew back then. No one was willing to let us even step foot inside them. The caves are either used to store bombs for the military or they’re under the jurisdiction of the National Parks Board, and either way, it’s impossible to shoot the cave scenes in Singapore. I was asked if I could cut them out from the screenplay, and I said no, because they are the heart of the film. I cut out other scenes to make way for the cave shoot. Luckily, we had three collaborators from the Philippines on our team, great friends who came to help the AD team and production design. One of them was a producer, and she was very supportive and offered to scout for locations in the Philippines. And she did. We went there and shot everything in a crazy long day, but it happened.
That’s incredible. Last question: any upcoming projects in the pipeline that you’re thinking of, or already in production with?
Not yet. I gave everything to this film, and now I am recovering. I’m excited to show the world this film. I mean, I am trying to work on a second film — squeezing something out, nothing definite yet. But I think everything I do will have something about Singapore in there.
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