Apa Dosaku: The Sybil Kathigasu Story
My films have screened at international festivals across Tokyo, Osaka, Berlin, Bangkok, Udine, Amsterdam, Singapore, Jakarta. They are intimate, character-driven and cross-cultural — stories about how people love, endure and are changed by the passage of time.
I came to filmmaking through sociology and anthropology, disciplines that taught me to see people not as archetypes but as layered, contradictory, unfinished beings. A Chevening Scholarship then brought me to Goldsmiths, University of London, where I completed a Master’s in writing and directing for screen — and where I learned that cinema is not made by imposing ideas on the world, but by listening to what the world is already saying.
I am drawn to the interior landscapes of people caught at a moment of rupture, reckoning or quiet transformation — the hinge-point in a life, when what was certain becomes fluid and what is about to emerge is not yet visible.
This sensibility runs through my feature work. Apa Dosaku: The Sybil Kathigasu Story dramatises the life of a Malayan nurse who endured torture at the hands of the Japanese Kempeitai and refused, under unimaginable pressure, to betray those she sheltered. Goodbye Boys is a raw, tender portrait of youth and friendship at the edge of becoming. Kontena Ana is built entirely around one woman, one room and one decision — a film of almost unbearable emotional restraint. Eropah, Here I Am and Lahzeye Bi Payan (In an Endless Instant) continue my exploration of love, identity and the self caught between cultures.
My romantic comedies — Istanbul Aku Datang, Pisau Cukur, Gol & Gincu, Manisnya Cinta di Cappadoccia — brought Malaysian audiences stories told with warmth, wit and an outsider’s tenderness for place.
In all of it, the same conviction holds: that cinema — at its best — is an act of contemplative attention. Not imposing meaning on a story but staying with it long enough for something true to become visible.
A way of keeping watch.
I continue to take on projects aligned with this vision, and am particularly drawn to biographical and cross-cultural narratives, legacy documentary and the creative preservation of lives and stories.
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