Singapore films Wet Season, A Land Imagined nominated at Golden Horse Awards
Both movies received a total of 10 nods including for Best Director, Best Narrative Feature and Best Original Screenplay.
Anthony Chen's second film, Wet Season. (Photo: Giraffe Pictures)
Singapore movies Wet Season and A Land Imagined have received a total of 10 Golden Horse Awards nominations. The list was unveiled on Tuesday (Oct 1).
Anthony Chen’s second film, Wet Season, was nominated for six awards: Best Narrative Feature; Best Director; Best Actress for Yeo Yann Yann; Best Supporting Actor for Koh Jia Ler and Yang Shi Bin; and Best Original Screenplay.
READ: Singaporean director Anthony Chen’s latest film to premiere at Toronto festival
Chen and Yeo had previously worked together on the director’s 2013 film, Ilo Ilo, which won four Golden Horse awards, including for Best Feature Film and Best New Director.
Meanwhile, Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined received four nominations: for Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Film Score, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Effects.
The film, about a detective investigating the disappearance of a migrant worker, is also Singapore’s entry to the Academy Awards’ Best International Feature, formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film.
Most of the nominees for this year's Golden Horse Awards – now in its 56th year – come from Taiwan, with a handful from Hong Kong. The award show is widely known as the Mandarin-speaking world’s version of the Oscars.
Taiwan filmmaker John Hsu’s thriller, Detention, leads with 12 nominations, including for Best Narrative Feature, Best New Director, Best Leading Actress and Best New Performer.
READ: China suspends mainland movies, stars from Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards
Chung Mong-hong's crime drama A Sun is the second most-nominated with 11 nods, including for Best Narrative Feature and Best Director.
Also in the running for those two categories is the Malaysian and UK co-production, The Garden Of Evening Mists, directed by Tom Lim. The romantic comedy has nine nominations in total.
The ceremony will be held on Nov 23 at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei.
This year’s awards is shrouded in controversy after China’s film regulator announced in August that it would be blocking the mainland movie industry from participating. The announcement was made on the official WeChat account of China Film News, which is a magazine published by the China Film Administration.
