How Ilo Ilo’s Anthony Chen came full circle with We Are All Strangers, which closes his trilogy

SINGAPORE – If Singapore writer-director Anthony Chen has his way, the next time he makes a film with Yeo Yann Yann, she will be playing a grandmother.

The 49-year-old Malaysian actress bursts into laughter.

He teases, turning to her: “Maybe you are Ah Ma.”

Before she can recover, local actor Koh Jia Ler, 25, jumps in with another observation.

“Anthony has become more naggy now. He became like this after having a son,” says Koh, grinning. “Maybe in my past life, I was his son. He’s always nagging at me.”

The exchange says everything about the relationship the three have built over the past 14 years.

They are no longer simply a director and his cast, but, as Chen, 42, puts it, a “constructed family”.

“It’s like someone who has lived overseas for a long time and comes back during Chinese New Year,” says the Hong Kong-based film-maker and father of an eight-year-old boy. “It takes two minutes, the ice melts, and you reconnect.

“We know each other’s buttons – which buttons to push, which buttons not to push, and even the buttons we shouldn’t push but still do.”

The trio are back together again for We Are All Strangers, which opens in Singapore cinemas on Aug 20 and completes Chen’s Growing Up trilogy. It comprises Ilo Ilo (2013) and Wet Season (2019), which also featured Yeo and Koh in the lead roles.

In the concluding chapter, Koh plays 21-year-old Junyang, whose relationship with his hawker father (played by Andi Lim) begins to unravel when Junyang and his girlfriend (Regene Lim) confront unexpected adult realities.

Into the household steps Yeo’s Bee Hwa, a vivacious Malaysian “beer lady” who unsettles the father-son dynamic – and gradually finds an unlikely home within the family as Junyang’s stepmother.

The drama captures the lives of ordinary people navigating a rapidly changing city, from an ageing hawker worried about succession to a younger generation shaped by gig work, live streaming and social media.

We Are All Strangers had its world premiere in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in February – the first Singapore film to compete for the Golden Bear top prize – and had travelled to festivals in Hong Kong, Italy, Australia and China before its homecoming.

For Chen, Yeo and Koh, speaking to The Straits Times on Aug 4 at Tong Bee Coffee Shop in Kembangan where part of the movie was shot, the trilogy’s completion carries a more personal weight.

Chen was in his 20s when Ilo Ilo, his debut feature about a Singapore family and their Filipino domestic worker, won the Camera d’Or for best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013.

Koh was just 11, a first-time actor picked from thousands of children after an exhaustive nationwide search.

Yeo, who had already established herself in Singapore films such as 881 (2007), 12 Lotus (2008) and Love Matters (2009), took a leap of faith on Chen.

Besides the prestigious win at Cannes, Ilo Ilo scored big at the Golden Horse Awards in the same year, with Chen bagging best feature film, Yeo winning best supporting actress and Koh earning a best new performer nomination.

Then came Wet Season, which reunited Yeo and Koh in a daring reimagining of their on-screen relationship – no longer mother and son, but teacher and student caught up in an inappropriate affair. The drama gave Yeo her second Golden Horse trophy, this time for best actress.

Now, the boy has become a man; the young budding director is one of Singapore’s most acclaimed film-makers; and three separate films have become a record of their lives, preserved on celluloid.

The trilogy that found them

Chen did not set out to make a trilogy with repeat collaborators though. After Ilo Ilo, he scouted for a fresh-faced teen to lead Wet Season. Hundreds were auditioned. None felt right.

Eventually, he called Koh back. The decision was almost immediate.

Chen also resisted pairing Yeo with Koh again as it “felt almost incestuous”.

He cast his net elsewhere, but once again returned to the leading lady who had been there all along.

“I’m not a religious person, but I believe there must be some kind of divine authority out there, giving you signs,” he says.

After Wet Season, Chen realised he had filmed Koh at 11 and 17. Completing the coming-of-age journey by capturing him in adulthood began to feel inevitable.

“A lot of times, you’re out there looking for the film,” he says. “But sometimes, the film is there looking for you.”

For Chen, Koh growing up across the trilogy was not only physical.

On Ilo Ilo, the Primary 6 pupil had no acting experience. Chen would perform a scene once, and Koh would follow, instinctively finding his own rhythm.

“He was very intuitive and observant,” Chen recalls. “It’s like music. Some people are tone-deaf, but he has a very natural beat.”

But in Wet Season, Koh struggled with the intimate scenes with Yeo, who is 24 years older.

She recounted that during one rehearsal, the overwhelmed teenager snapped at Chen, saying: “If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it yourself?”. Then came his real objection: “Of all people, why did you have to choose Yann Yann?”

Six years later, We Are All Strangers presented a different challenge.

Koh, who is helping out in his family’s transport business, initially resisted the discipline demanded by a film set and its subsequent promotional duties – losing weight, sleeping properly, watching his diet and travelling to festivals afterwards.

Then, about a third of the way into filming, something shifted.

Koh suddenly began discussing motivation, analysing scenes and understanding how his movements worked with the camera.

“Before, he was a non-actor being himself and being natural.”

Chen adds with much pride: “The growing up happened not just from a boy to a man. He found himself as an actor.”

Koh, who now hopes to explore full-time acting and leverage his martial arts background for future projects in the action genre, felt it too. “I started to understand how to be a better actor. But it was a little bit too late.”

“Never too late,” Yeo cuts in.

Chen sees parallels between Koh and Junyang. In the film, the character resists following his father into the hawker trade. Koh, too, had spent years opposing the idea that he might be an actor. Both eventually stop fighting what has been in front of them.

A relationship built on risk

For Yeo, one word sums up her relationship with Chen: risk.

They first worked together on his 2007 short film Ah Ma before he left Singapore in 2008 to pursue a master’s degree in film in England. After watching Ah Ma, she asked him to keep her in mind when he needed an actress – the first time she had approached a director for a role.

She had to fight harder for Ilo Ilo as she became pregnant before filming. When Chen considered replacements, she told him: “If looking for another actress at this point is a risk for you, using me is also a risk. Why don’t you take the risk on me?”

Yeo, who has a 14-year-old daughter, says Chen has repeatedly offered her characters she did not expect – and sometimes did not believe she could play, constantly challenging her as a performer.

She says. “It is his trust in me that has nurtured me all these years.”

She compares their collaborations to “returning to a mountain to retrain”. Every few years, they get back together, push one another and make something that stays with them.

A changing Singapore

Seen together, the trilogy also paints a portrait of almost three decades of Singapore.

Ilo Ilo is rooted in the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Wet Season captures the country in the early 2010s, and We Are All Strangers unfolds amid SG60 celebrations in 2025.

“Each puts the lens on Singapore, but not in a stylised way or in a way where we were trying to exoticise Singapore,” Chen says.

The idea of family also runs through all three films, although the strongest bonds are not always defined by blood.

The theme extends beyond his Singapore-set works. In Drift (2023), starring British actress-singer Cynthia Erivo, a Liberian refugee and an American tour guide from very different worlds form an intimate bond over a few days in Greece.

For Chen, such encounters reflect his recurring interest in people who begin as strangers but find, however briefly, a sense of family and belonging in one another.

He believes his fascination with outsiders searching for connection may stem from his own uncertainty about where he belongs.

After completing his film studies, he set up home in London. But even though he has spent almost 15 years in the city, building a community there with his Chinese wife, a 44-year-old who works in risk and finance, and child, he still finds himself an outsider at times.

And whenever he is back home, he sometimes feels equally unsure.

“I feel like I understand Singapore so well, but so many times I feel like I don’t understand it,” he says. “I’m constantly finding my place.”

Even We Are All Strangers’ title pulls in opposite directions. In Chinese, Wo Men Bu Shi Mo Sheng Ren means “We Are Not Strangers” instead – one creates distance, while the other draws people together.

Chen also wants his trilogy to preserve Singapore’s mix of Mandarin, English, Singlish and dialect, however difficult it can be for overseas distributors to translate.

“No one is going to tell our stories for us,” he says. “We owe it to ourselves to tell our own stories.”

A bittersweet farewell

A month-long series of activities has been planned to celebrate the trilogy’s completion, starting with We Are All Strangers’ gala premiere on Aug 7 at Marina Bay Sands’ Sands Theatre. Gracing the event are President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and his wife Jane Ittogi, together with Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo.

Reruns of Ilo Ilo and Wet Season will be screened at Golden Village Century Square and Cineleisure on Aug 8 and 9, and Aug 15 and 16 respectively.

Indie cinema Filmhouse will also hold a Growing Up Trilogy marathon on Aug 15 and 16, with an exhibition, merchandise launch and question-and-answer sessions with Chen and the cast.

There is also a meet-and-greet event with the team on Aug 21 at S11 AMK coffee shop, where fans can join in a karaoke session and take part in interactive games.

Closing this chapter does not mean ending their relationship. The trio may still find their way back to one another, although perhaps in different roles and at another stage of their lives.

“Now that we have come of age, it’s also freeing us to try other things,” Chen says. “And, for all you know, everything might come full circle again.”

For now, however, the trilogy has reached what he calls a “proper closure”, although it’s “quite bittersweet”.

That feeling crystallised while the team was shooting a scene near the end of We Are All Strangers.

Outside the State Courts, Junyang gets into a taxi, overcome with remorse. As the sun sets, he looks through the window, and the camera pans across his face.

Something about the image moved Chen and his assistant director from all three films. Then came the realisation.

Chen had not deliberately set out to recreate the moment. But somehow, the fading light, the movement of the camera and Koh’s face had aligned, allowing the finale to mirror where their journey began.

“It’s the exact same shot that we did at the end of Ilo Ilo,” Chen says.

We Are All Strangers opens in Singapore cinemas on Aug 20.