New York Festivals TV & Film Awards

Singaporean actors, shows up for TV and film awards

(Clockwise from top left) Singaporean actress Udaya Soundari is in the running for best performance by an actress, while actors Frederick Lee, Qi Yuwu, Imam Shah and Lim Kay Tong are in the running for best actor. PHOTOS: BERITA HARIAN, FREDODEDOO/INSTAGRAM, LIANHE ZAOBAO, SOUNDARI/INSTAGRAM

NEW YORK • Four out of six of the finalists for the best actor category at the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards this year are from Singapore shows.

Founded in 2005, the annual festival celebrates and promotes independent small-screen productions, Web series and television shows.

The Singapore finalists, announced on Wednesday, include Qi Yuwu as a time-travelling Ming dynasty guard in A Quest To Heal; Frederick Lee as a serial killer in crime thriller Mind's Eye; Lim Kay Tong as a mute in science-fiction telemovie Raksasa; and Imam Shah in Suria's martial arts miniseries Saga 2.0, in which he played a fighter.

They are up against Hong Kong's Lai Yiu-cheung (Death By Zero) and Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta (Aqui En La Tierra).

For best performance by an actress, Singaporean Udaya Soundari is up against five other stars from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Britain and Argentina for her role in Vasantham's Arivaan, a crime-thriller Web series.

A number of local productions also made the list of finalists in categories such as documentaries, movies and direction.

These include Mediacorp's current affairs programme Tuesday Report on Channel 8, as well as Threesixzero Productions' Food In Our Time documentary and three shows from August Pictures, including Mind's Eye.

Four short films from Temasek Polytechnic also made the cut for the best student film category.

According to the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards website, entries for this year's awards were judged online and screened by a grand jury of more than 200 producers, directors, writers and other creative media professionals from around the world.

The winners will be announced on Oct 12 in Las Vegas.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on June 11, 2021, with the headline Singaporean actors, shows up for TV and film awards . Subscribe