The Singapore International Film Festival awarded Ah Girl Best Film in the Asian Feature Film Competition at the Silver Screen Awards, bestowing the central honor of the selection upon the debut feature by Singaporean director Ang Geck Geck Priscilla. It is an achievement that highlights a work born within the festival's own development ecosystem: the project had indeed passed through the SGIFF Southeast Asian Film Lab in 2015, long before reaching audiences and the international circuit.
Set in 1990s Singapore, Ah Girl follows a seven-year-old girl dealing with her parents' separation. A child's perspective and a family story grounded in a specific urban and temporal setting define the scope of the film, which had previously received the Youth Jury Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The Singapore prize thus caps a particularly significant journey for Ang's debut: not just recognition from an international festival, but an accolade earned in the very city and production ecosystem where the project first began.
An award that measures the work done before filming
For festivals, screenwriting and development labs are not secondary activities compared to programming. They are spaces where still-fragile projects find mentorship, production partners, and opportunities for dialogue; only a fraction of those titles will eventually become a completed feature. In the case of Ah Girl, the eleven-year span between the Southeast Asian Film Lab and the main prize shows just how lengthy and discontinuous timelines can be in independent film, especially for a debut work.
SGIFF thus sees an award go to a film it helped nurture within its own perimeter. This is a significant dynamic for a festival focused on Asian and Southeast Asian cinema: reputation is built not solely through premieres or international guests, but also through the ability to support talents and projects through to their circulation. Ang, who also trained at the Busan Asian Film Academy, had previously earned local recognition in 2012, when her short film Broken Crayon won the award for best short at the Singapore Short Film Awards.
The success of Ah Girl therefore offers a concrete case of continuity between short films, training programs, development, and a feature debut. It does not automatically guarantee wide distribution or financial returns: a festival award is no substitute for a deal with a distributor. However, it increases the visibility of the title and its director, two decisive factors at a stage when an independent film must secure new territories, international sales partners, and slots in subsequent programming lineups.
Shahrbanoo Sadat awarded for «No Good Men»
The Best Director award went to Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat for No Good Men, a drama presented as the opening film at the Berlinale. Set in Kabul on the eve of the Taliban's return to power, the film chronicles the situation of a camerawoman whose work, personal relationships, and freedom quickly enter a zone of uncertainty. Sadat has lived in Germany since 2021 and previously directed Wolf and Sheep, screened at Cannes in 2016, and The Orphanage in 2019.
The recognition in Singapore comes hot on the heels of another accolade for the same film: on October 30, No Good Men received the Jury Grand Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The two wins, across events with distinct identities and juries, reinforce the trajectory of a work that has already embarked on its run through major festivals. For Sadat, it also marks an authorial confirmation at a time when stories tied to contemporary Afghanistan are finding international space without losing their personal and professional dimensions.
The SGIFF jury awarded the Best Performance prize ex aequo. Pushpa Thing Lama was recognized for Elephants in the Fog, a film centered on a member of Nepal's Kinnar community searching for a missing daughter; Putri Marino won for Four Seasons in Java, a tale steeped in magical realism about a woman returning to her hometown after twenty years in prison. The Special Jury Prize went to Japan's Nagahisa Makoto for Burn, the director's second feature and a title previously screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
Taken together, the awards outline a competition built around cinema traditions and filmmakers from across diverse regions of Asia, with works that tackle family separations, gender identity, imprisonment, memory, and freedom. The common thread is not a single industrial model: rather, these are films that find their initial space of legitimacy at festivals, even before entering the traditional commercial market.
Shorts, animation, and the role of the local audience
The section dedicated to Southeast Asian short films awarded Golden Island by Yogyakarta artist and director Arief Budiman. The film follows a videographer from Java and another from Papua collaborating on a shared project about Papua. The Best Director award went to Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke for The Bovine Comedy, set in a 2036 where cows have almost disappeared. The director had previously gained attention at Cannes in 2025 with his debut A Useful Ghost, winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize.
The Special Jury Prize for shorts went to Berthold Wahjudi for ‘Vaterland’ or A Bule Named Yanto, while Sarah Lingam received the award for Best Performance in Flame of the Forest. On the domestic front, the Best Singapore Short Film went to Singapore God, directed by experimental animator Exyl. The choice reflects the diversity of formats the festival considers part of its landscape: not only live-action fiction and narrative works, but also animation and experimental cinema.
The audience instead selected Singapore Panorama Programme 2, titled Second Life, Second Skin, a lineup comprising five shorts: Kiss Me Climax by Shara Tay, Subterranea by Ash Goh Hua, Reanimator by Syahmi Iman, Orang Minyak by Leon Cheo, and Encik by Ewan Leong. The Audience Award does not go to a single title, but to a curated showcase, highlighting the value of programming and local storytelling in connecting with festivalgoers.
The next step for «Ah Girl»
The Silver Screen Award alone does not resolve the question of distribution, which remains a distinct and often difficult hurdle for Asian arthouse cinema. However, for Ah Girl, it adds significant recognition to a journey that has already passed through Rotterdam and links Ang Geck Geck Priscilla's name to two influential institutions in regional professional training, SGIFF and Busan Asian Film Academy. For programmers, sales agents, and potential distributors, this kind of continuity is a useful signal: the film does not emerge from nowhere, but from a recognizable development trajectory.
The win also holds symbolic value for Singapore. In an industry where local productions compete against much larger linguistic and industrial markets, an award presented to a debut rooted in the city's social history demonstrates the role festival circuits can play in making specific stories exportable. The next test will be turning critical attention into new viewing opportunities, without reducing Ah Girl to an awards-list success.
