Film picks: Anatomy Of A Fall, Tokyo Godfathers and Singapore International Film Festival

Anatomy Of A Fall (NC16)

151 minutes, exclusively at The Projector
4 stars

A woman is suspected of murder when her husband is found dead in the snow outside their French Alps chalet. As the sole witness, the couple’s 11-year-old visually disabled son faces a moral dilemma.

Did the deceased plummet from the attic by accident? Or was he pushed?

Winner of the Palme d’Or top prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and a current nominee for five European Film Awards including for best film, actress and director, this French legal drama is really an autopsy of a marriage.

German actress Sandra Huller, in her second collaboration with her Sibyl (2019) auteur Justine Triet, is stupendous in the starring role, maintaining her innocence and inscrutable composure over the lengthy trial while ugly details of her marital breakdown are picked apart.

Thanks to the commanding film-making, this art-house crime mystery earns – and deepens – every minute of its hefty runtime.

Tokyo Godfathers (PG)

The drama-comedy Tokyo Godfathers by Satoshi Kon tells the story of three homeless people who find an abandoned infant and go on a mission to find the foundling’s parents. PHOTO: THE PROJECTOR

92 minutes, limited screenings at The Projector

This classic work of animation is being brought back for Christmas.

Acclaimed Japanese director Satoshi Kon took a break from the usual when he made this 2003 drama-comedy. Instead of showing what happens when reality and fantasy collide – ideas he explored in the drama Millennium Actress (2001) and the thriller Perfect Blue (1997) – he sticks with realism in Tokyo Godfathers.

Set over the Christmas period, it follows three homeless people who discover a foundling while combing through garbage. As they set out to find the infant’s parents using clues found with the baby, the well-intentioned trio discover that not everyone in Tokyo is as good-hearted as them.

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Where: Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure, Level 5, 8 Grange RoadMRT: Somerset/OrchardWhen: Dec 3, 2.30pmTickets: $15 for standard ticket prices
Info: str.sg/ix8N

Singapore International Film Festival

In Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, Vietnamese film-maker Pham Thien An explores ideas of eternity in the format of a road movie. PHOTO: POTOCOL

Vietnam’s Pham Thien An had his debut feature Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell (NC16, 182 minutes, screens on Dec 9, 11am) pick up the Camera d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, and American entertainment trade magazine Variety calls the three-hour film “transfixing”.

It deals with notions of loss, grief and eternity in a country that is restlessly moving forward, but contains places where time stands still.

Ho Chi Minh City resident Thien (Le Phong Vu) is a young man who discovers that his sister-in-law, who lives in the same city, has died in a traffic accident. His five-year-old nephew Dao (Nguyen Thinh) is now his to care for.

The pair takes the body back to the rural wilds of her home village. As the two make their way across Vietnam, the spirituality that lies beneath the surface of the land and its people reveals itself.

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Where: Various venues, including Filmgarde Leisure Park Kallang, Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure and Gallery Theatre at the National Museum of SingaporeWhen: Nov 30 to Dec 10, various timesAdmission: Free and ticketed (from $10)
Info: sgiff.com