Balancing Act
Director Woo Ming-jin doesn’t really care where you see his movie, just as long as you do.
Woo Ming-jin
Okay, that’s not quite true. Tokyo-based Malaysian filmmaker Woo Ming-jin does care. Given his druthers, movies made for cinemas would be seen in cinemas, but at this point in time Woo is a veteran, and understands full well that’s just not a guarantee anymore. Speaking from Bucheon via Zoom, where his latest, Indera, is premiering at BIFAN, Woo seems to have a complicated relationship with the increasingly dominant streaming format. From an independent perspective, “We absolutely welcome streaming as an outlet,” he begins. “The definition of cinema is very narrow, so the films that I was making [early in my career] weren’t accepted by the mainstream. Unless I made a zombie movie, which is why I did … But films like Stone Turtle were embraced by the streamers and we were able to monetise it, where before streamers came in I don’t think there would be any interest in it.” One of Woo’s strongest films, Stone Turtle (from 2022), unfolding on Malaysia’s wilder coast, is a supernatural sci-fi fable, kind of, that was literally saved from obscurity by Amazon. “I’d won a bunch of awards and gone to like 50, 60 festivals. So there was interest around the world but zero in Malaysia. Nobody cared. Which is not something I’m not used to,” he cracks with a chuckle. “But because people like Amazon and Netflix and Disney+ are, you could say talent-based they’ll look and say ‘Oh, this is a good film, so we’ll buy it.’ I was grateful that the streamers were there.”
Worldwide contraction and an industry in flux is forcing filmmakers like Woo – and even titans like Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott – into tighter and tighter corners, and making festivals like BIFAN ever more crucial than in the past. Indera played well in its theatrical debut, and Woo and his producing partners are holding out for a theatrical release, at the very least at home in Malaysia, but they’re also being realistic. Streamers give films like Indera – which Woo insists works better on a big screen, especially judging from the audience response – more potential for discovery. That’s the bottom line. “I’m of the opinion that the streamers allow more films to get to more eyeballs. Our films are not getting into theatres; the Marvels are taking those screens. I’ll take home streaming over nothing.”
That might be jumping the gun. Indera is in the privileged position of being, for lack of a better word, trendy. The sudden rush of attention paid to Southeast Asian films that have begun actively embracing location-specific history and folklore has led to an uptick of programming – and releases – outside Asia. Filmmakers from Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam experimenting in genre have popped up everywhere from Italy to Argentina. In My Mother’s Skin (below, left) by Kenneth Dagatan from the Philippines, Yosep Anggi Noen’s 24 Hours with Gaspar (right) and Rizal Mantovani’s Train of Death from Indonesia are just a few. Dagatan, for one, wasn’t afraid to explore into the Filipino perspective on the Second World War through horror. Woo agrees.
“Personally and from what I’ve observed in the last several years, I’d say for three or four years or so there’s been a slow uptick in interest in SEA, Indonesia in particular. Government film policies, especially in Malaysia, have really opened up their co-production grants, which has really helped the entire region,” he reasons, adding a surge in Singaporean investment has added to that. “When I started making films [policy] didn’t support independent films. It supported the mainstream. In the last five years governments have shifted and policy has changed. We don’t know how long it’ll last but there’s been more interest in supporting the arts. So I think all these factors contribute to the sort of boom, if you can call it that.”
Woo’s psychological horror film (dare we say, elevated horror?) Indera slots in nicely with that movement. The short version: A widower, Joe (Shahiezy Sam), and his nine-year-old daughter Sofia (Samara Kenzo) relocate to northern Malaysia when he takes a desperately needed job with a Javanese shaman (Ruminah Sidek) at her orphanage. It’s 1985, around the time of the real life Memali Incident, in which 200 cops stormed a Muslim village sect of roughly 400 in the Memali region, ending with nearly 20 deaths and an oppressive curfew. Needless to say, nothing is quite what it seems, and Joe and Sofia begin experiencing disturbances, many involving the dead wife/mother Anisa (Azira Shafinaz). Indera, literally meaning “senses”, balances the emotional artistry that put Woo on the cinema map – his 2007 breakout The Elephant and the Sea, and 2010’s The Tiger Factory – and the mainstream work that paid the bills: KL Zombie (2013) and Zombitopia (2021).
“As I said, the definition of cinema is very narrow in Malaysia. So if I wanted a sustainable career I couldn’t just keep making Tiger Factory,” he says. “So I made a decision to do a few commercial films to just to test the waters. I have my guilty pleasures; I love zombie movies, and I wanted to try a slow burn horror, because I’m a big fan of Ari Aster and Joko Anwar, and Korean horrors like The Wailing. It’s almost an experiment for me in terms of getting out of my comfort zone. It wasn’t an easy experience because I personally don’t think it’s my forte.”
Though it can be argued Indera is cut from the same cloth as Dagatan and Noen’s films, Woo and co-writers Diego Mahameru and Muzzamer Rahman scaled back the religious factionalism backdrop in favour of the what they thought of as the core story: a family drama about the failures of parenthood, a father’s disinterest in his child and his guilt over it. “I was intrigued by Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, and when we started the reference to Memali wasn’t there,” explains Woo. In the end he wasn’t convinced the sociopolitical elements worked – for Malaysians or for anyone else. “Let’s be honest: people don’t want to work hard watching your film. They don’t want to suffer.” Despite what Woo thinks, Indera’s horror cred is strong (helped along by lush, moody visuals by cinematographer Saifudin Musa) and a thick sense of dread and resentment – of lost time, lost opportunity and a lost partner. “Joe has that struggle, and obviously at the end, he comes to a realisation but it’s just too late.” Should we be concerned that Woo has children, one of whom was roughly Sofia’s age when he was writing Indera? “I’m not Joe. I don’t share Joe’s feelings, but I understand him,” he laughs. “I could have made more films!”
Up next for Woo is The Fox King, an Indonesian-Malaysian co-production, a coming-of-age story about telepathic fraternal twins and how a teacher disrupts their lives. As a twin himself, it’s near and dear to Woo’s heart, but it may also mark the end of the genre filmmaking road for a little while. “I’m actually working with a Hong Kong writer to do a movie in Cantonese or Mandarin. It’s an action-drama, like a revenge thriller. It has those elements and so I’m not totally done with genre yet,” he finishes. “But I think I’m done with the straight-up made for local audiences horror and sci-fi. I’m Cantonese … I want to do something more artistically driven and that’s closer to me, which in a way is why I want to do this Chinese language film. Even though I grew up in it, Malay Bahasa culture is very different from my own, and I’d like to explore something new.” That said, he wouldn’t give it up. The mainstream stuff was a learning experience Woo is happy to have had, and besides. Not only did it get space in theatres, it’s serving him well now. He’s better at action directing than some of his peers. Plus: “I can send my kids to school.” — DEK