The Close-Up

The year 2020 has been a write-off for much of the world, but for Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen, you could say it has been a write-on. As the planet ground to an almost standstill, the 37-year-old award-winning auteur took just a year to write his third feature film, titled We Are All Strangers. It’s a resounding achievement, considering he took three years to write 2019’s Wet Season, his follow-up to the debut feature film which put him—and Singapore filmmaking—on the cinematic map. The 2013 movie garnered Chen the prestigious Caméra d’Or, an honour a filmmaker can only win once in his or her life, for the best first feature film presented in one of the Cannes Film Festival’s selections.