The first image from Singaporean director Anthony Chen’s We Are All Strangers may evoke the iconic wedding in the opening scene of Edward Yang’s Taiwanese drama Yi Yi. Both dramas from Asia present a panoramic portrait of a family rocked by unforeseen circumstances and grappling with the mundane realities of an economic life incompatible with its goals. Although the connections are extensive, it’s worth keeping the comparisons going, as the “Wet Season” and “Ilo Ilo” director’s fifth film is one big, beautiful beast of a movie. Watch an exclusive clip in the video above.
The first Singaporean film ever to be screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, Chen’s new drama features perennial star Yu Yan Yan as Pei Hua, a beer waitress who marries into one’s family. Patriarch Boon Kiat (Andy Lim) runs a noodle stall while his son (Koh Gia Ler) is drafted too young into the army – until a major life development brings him back home, and with a new stepmother at the helm. The above scene offers a glimpse into Boon Kiat and Bee Hwa’s wedding, with cinematographer Teoh Gai Hian.
This is big, serious, open-hearted cinema with a compassionate eye for its characters — even in their worst moments, especially as “We Are All Strangers” takes a turn toward crime drama as the legal issues mount for this new found, bonded-together family.
“We Are All Strangers” marks the third and final chapter in Anthony Chen’s “Growing Up” trilogy, following “Ilo Ilo” and “Wet Season.” All of his films deal with the fragile dynamics within families, and the class issues that pressure them. The Singapore-born director paused from that trilogy to direct the thrilling love triangle drama “The Breaking Ice,” which premiered at Cannes in 2023. Chen took on his only English-language project to date with 2023’s “Drift,” starring Cynthia Erivo as a Liberian refugee grappling with her past on a remote Greek island.
We Are All Strangers premieres at the Berlin Film Festival on February 16; It is currently seeking distribution in the United States. Watch IndieWire’s exclusive clip from the film above.
