SINGAPORE - Filming has started for the movie adaptation of The Garden Of Evening Mists, the award-winning novel by Penang-born writer,Tan Twan Eng.

Set to premier in 2019, the movie will be shot in Malaysian locations such as the tea plantations in Cameron Highlands, Malaysian film production company Astro Shaw and partners HBO Asia and Malaysia's National Film Development Corp (Finas) announced on Monday (July 2).

Tan's second novel, published in 2012, was shortlisted for the Man Booker and won the Man Asian Literary Prize and Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.

Helmed by Taiwanese director Tom Lin, the movie is set in the 1950s and 1980s and features an international cast. Award-winning Taiwanese film-maker, actress and singer Sylvia Chang stars as main character Teoh Yun Ling, a judge who looks back on her life during the Japanese occupation in Malaysia. She commissions Nakamura Aritomo, a Japanese gardener played by Japanese actor Hiroshi Abe, to design a garden in memory of her sister, who died in a Japanese internment camp during the war.

The film also stars Malaysian actress/singer Lee Sinje, who won a Golden Horse Award for Best Actress award for 2002 horror flick The Eye, and Singaporean actress Tan Kheng Hua.

Other cast members include British actor John Hannah, best known for his roles in Hollywood films like Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994) and The Mummy trilogy (1999 - 2008) and fellow English actors Julian Sands (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, 2011, Naked Lunch, 1991) and David Oakes (Victoria, 2016-2017).

The film's award-winning crew include Scottish screenwriter Richard Smith, who won a Bafta (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Scotland award in 2002 and makeup and hair designer Nikki Gooley, known for her Bafta-winning work in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (2005).