CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in Singapore has long been criticised by human rights groups, yet the majority of us know little about it other than reading the occasional few sentences in the local media.
Talented director Boo Junfeng set out to change that with his second feature, “The Apprentice”, a prison drama that focuses on the men behind the executions. It was selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section and, while it didn’t win a prize, it won a good deal of acclaim from audiences.
Junfeng is a rising talent, whose first feature, the 2011 drama “Sandcastle” screened at Cannes Critics’ Week. While “Sandcastle” was about a teenager about to be enlisted into the army, “The Apprentice” has a much more serious bent, focusing on the life of Aiman, a young man who decides to work in a Singapore prison. There he meets Rahim, the prison’s chief executioner and forms a relationship with him. The twist comes when Rahim learns that he was responsible for hanging Aiman’s father.
“I think this is the first time that a film like this has been made in Singapore,” says Junfeng, adding that it shows a side of the city-state that is rarely discussed.
“The film is basically driven by my sense of curiosity. I was fascinated to learn the executioner’s point of view, to look at his job and see what he has to go through,” says Junfeng, who interviewed a real-life executioner in Singapore before making his film.
“I needed to know how they manage to bring themselves to do the job. One of them has been doing it for a long time. And what struck me was how much I liked him when I was talking to him. Before the interview, I was really nervous. I had a certain character in mind and when I met the executioner he was a very nice grandfather type of figure, very funny, very lovable. That completely changed my attitude, and forced me to think hard about the character I wanted to create.”
One of the possible reasons why no Singaporean film has touched this subject before is the strict censorship for which the country is known. Yet the film received financial support from the government’s Media Development Authority.
“We got 40 per cent of the funding from them but we had to find the rest by ourselves. So far I haven’t faced any issue regarding censorship,” he says.
“We decided to cast colour-blind,” he says of his selection of the main characters in the film, all of whom are Malay and speak Malay, also unusual in Singaporean cinema.
“For the characters I created, it doesn’t really matter where they are from. We cast Chinese actors, Malay actors and Indian actors. In the end, Wan Hanafi Su from Malaysia landed the role of the executioner, and Fir Rahman from Singapore was cast as Aiman mainly because of the chemistry between them.”
Wan, a veteran actor, has become something of a film-festival favourite of late, starring in Liew Seng Tat’s “Men Who Save the World” and Dain Said’s “Bunohan”. Fir Rahman, on the other hand, is a TV actor and a rookie to the big screen.
“Since both of them are Malay, we decided to make the dialogue between them Malay. Even though there are Malay filmmakers in Singapore, they are in a minority. That’s purely for commercial reasons though. Singapore is 70-per-cent Chinese and that’s why a lot of Singapore films tend to stick with Mandarin as the language. It didn’t really matter to us as we saw the market of this film as more international than local. What mattered was the chemistry between the characters.”
Filmed partially in Singapore, much of the film was shot in Australia. “We shot a number of the exteriors of the prison in Singapore for which we received permission, but we didn’t ask for permission to shoot inside. I very doubt that it would have been given and even if it had, I don’t think a real prison in Singapore would be a very cinematic space,” says Junfeng with a grin.
He therefore chose an abandoned prison in Sydney, which was built a long time ago and is of a similar design to prison in other countries once under the realm of the British Empire.
“It could easily be a prison in Singapore,” he says. “The architecture is authentic.”
“The Apprentice” earned plenty of praise after its screening at Cannes and will shortly go on general release in France.
“It’s been quite overwhelming. People came up to me and told me they had been affected by the film. I am very happy that my cast and crew from all over the world worked so well together.
Lee Chatametikool edited “The Apprentice”, says Junfeng, referring to the award-winning Thai director and editor.
“The film will open in Singapore in June. Right now there’s a nice buzz surrounding it, so hopefully we can show it to as many people as possible.”
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.