Inside ‘Ah Girl,’ the Singapore Drama Built From a Director’s Own Childhood: ‘We Can’t Fly Without First Learning How to Walk’

Ang Geck Geck Priscilla spent more than a decade making “Ah Girl” before she ever made “Ah Girl.” Three short films and a decade of festival labs later, the Singaporean director’s feature debut is a Centrepiece selection at the Toronto Film Festival for its North American premiere, following wins at Rotterdam and Hong Kong. The character first appeared in Ang’s 2013 short “Broken Crayon,” which won best short film at the Singapore Short Film Festival that year and kicked off a trilogy that continued with “Little Pigs” and “Happy Birthday.” Ang says she had a feature in mind from the beginning but didn’t feel ready to commit to one. The shorts became a testing ground for her instincts as a director.

Ang says she kept returning to a single question while drafting the script: what does Ah Girl see, feel and think is happening, rather than what the audience needs to be told. Children, she says, register far more than the adults around them assume. Casting took close to a year, resolving in newcomer Ong Xuan Jing, who spent three months building trust and playing games with Ang before filming began rather than rehearsing lines.

Aggregate Films, IFA Media and Kusu Films are credited as producers, alongside Charlyn Ng and Wendy Lie, and the project was backed by Infocomm Media Development Authority Singapore’s New SG Director Grant and the Purin Film Fund. Hoping Chen, who won the best film editing award for “Bel Ami” at the 61st Golden Horse Film Festival, edited the film. Since premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it won the Youth Jury Award, “Ah Girl” has traveled to Melbourne, Hong Kong, Udine, Innsbruck, Shanghai, Munich, Da Nang, Bucheon and Malaysia.

The film also collected a Golden Firebird Award for best actress in a Chinese-language film at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, along with a best actress prize and the New Hope Award at the Malaysia International Film Festival. Ang says she’s been struck by how audiences across very different cultures have told her they see themselves in Ah Girl. Ang isn’t finished with the character.

She hopes to follow Ah Girl through a trilogy spanning childhood, adolescence and middle age, ideally with the same cast aging alongside their roles. Before that, though, she’s turning to a psychological horror feature expanded from “Broken Crayon,” the thesis short that started it all. I’m just letting her grow up a little while I go and scare some people first.”