Ah Girl

Winner of Rotterdam’s Youth Jury Award, this beautifully affecting portrayal of young sisters navigating their parents’ divorce revolves around a pair of stunning child performances.

In 90s Singapore, seven-year-old Swee Swee – or “Ah Girl”, as her family calls her – is trying to understand what’s going on in her world. Living with her grandparents as her parents go through a separation, she’s looking out for her younger sister, Ah Tian, and searching for some sense of stability. Instead, her erratic, often-absent mother is prone to making unrealistic promises of an imagined future together, while her father – dating a string of potential new partners – is wondering if the kids should go live with an aunt and uncle in Australia. Torn between competing adults and growing increasingly curious about the world, Ah Girl begins to realise that her family life isn’t normal, and that adults can’t be relied on.

As Ah Girl and Ah Tian respectively, newcomers Ong Xuan Jing and Sydney Wong give two of the most incredible child-actor performances you’ll ever see, emotions alive across their tiny faces. Shooting her two leads in close-up and anchoring the entire narrative from a child’s perspective, writer/director Ang Geck Geck Priscilla upends all the familiar tropes of the divorce drama. “Children shouldn’t care about adult problems,” Ah Girl is told; but what she realises is that, as a kid, you’re going to be dragged through the problems of adults no matter how much you try to avoid them. As she retorts: “All adults are liars.”

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival