Talentime
Canadian Premiere
Screening Time
Friday, May 28, 8:45pm
Sunday, May 30, 4:30pm
Film Trailer
Fiction / Malaysia / 2009 / 120 minutes
Director： Yasmin Ahmad
Producer: Ahmad Puad Onah
Produced by Chilli Pepper Fims
Language : English, Malay, Cantonese, Madarin, Tamil, Hindi w/ English subtitles
In Memory of Yasmin Ahmad
Talentime follows three families of different ethnicities: a mixed Malaysian family, an Indian family composed of a widow and her two children, and a dying Malay mother and her son. The thread that brings them together is a high school talent show in which a child from each of the three families is involved. An interracial romance, class differences and even possible tragedy concern these would-be performers, with everything set to climax in a final evening of musical performances and untold possibilities. A fitting swansong for the late Yasmin Ahmad, Talentime confirms the universal themes, abundant humanity and belief in love that so informed the director’s works.
Awards
Best Director, Best Screenplay, 22nd Malaysian Film Festival (2009)
About Yasmin Ahmad
Acclaimed as one of the most important Malaysian film directors, Yasmin Ahmad (January 7, 1958 – July 25, 2009) suffered from stroke and died at the age of 51. Her films have won awards internationally from prestigious film festivals including Berlin and Cannes.
Yasmin Ahmad was part of a new generation of filmmakers who reflected the wide ethnic and cultural diversity of her country and the lives and dreams of its young people. Stylistically, her principal influences were Yasujiro Ozu and Douglas Sirk, although she created her own western and oriental mixture. Her films challenged ethnic stereotypes, and she was openly against any type of fundamentalism and racism, making it her life’s work to support minority rights. Unsurprisingly, her feature films were disliked by the regime in Malaysia, a conservative, mostly Muslim country, for tackling taboo subjects such as inter-racial relations and teenage angst. In fact, the second, and perhaps most renowned of her six features, Sepet (2004), was banned in Malaysia, until Ahmad agreed to make eight cuts.
Talentime (2009) is Yasmin Ahmad’s final completed film. At the time of her death, Ahmad was in pre-production on her first feature film to be shot in Singapore, Go, Thaddeus!, which was to have been about Thaddeus Cheong, a 17-year-old Singaporean triathlete who died after completing a trial for the 2007 South-east Asian Games.
Filmography
Rabun (2002)
Sepet (2004)
Gubra (2005)
Voice at the Bottom of the Pyramid (documentary, 2005)
Mukhsin (2006)
Muallaf (2007)
Talentime (2009)
Media Presenting Partner
