“Childhood May Shape Who You Are, but It Doesn't Really Define You”: An Interview with Ang Geck Geck Priscilla

With her debut feature, Ah Girl, Ang Geck Geck Priscilla won the Youth Jury Award at the 55th IFFR. Focusing on a girl experiencing drastic changes as her family is on the brink of splitting up, this Singapore-based story impresses the audience with extensive care, a strong sense of humor, and the genuine naivety of childhood brought by the talented young actresses, ONG Jing Xuan (Ah Girl) and Sydney Wong (Ah Tian). 

Q: I was sobbing while I was watching the film. Such childhood trauma, it’s quite common to see among Asian families. I find the leading actress’s performance super convincing, so I would like to start by discussing her. How did you find this genius, talented little actress who leads the whole film?

Ang: We spent about one year on casting. Xuan Jing (the lead actress who plays Ah Girl) actually came to casting a few times, but when I first saw her, she was still too young. So I didn’t shortlist her. And she was with her parents when we were doing the audition. I think that was also maybe a factor in why we didn’t choose her, because she was taking a lot of instruction from the parents. Then after that, I think some time passed, she grew a little bit and she’s a bit older, and this time my casting format was slightly different—we’re in a small room and we didn’t have the parents. We only want the kids themselves in the room with the director and the casting director.

What happened was we had a three-month workshop with a group of kids that were shortlisted. From there, we pick up the best two, the sister and Ah Tian and Ah Girl, basically. We had a teacher in Singapore mainly to interact with them in Mandarin, another Taiwan teacher also teaching in Mandarin and she’s also an acting coach, plus me—I want to learn from the acting coach at the same time. I was also doing more interaction with the kids, conducting classes, and guiding the acting coach and the Chinese teacher in Singapore because kids in Singapore all speak English, so it’s very hard for them to speak very natural conversational Mandarin.

Throughout the workshop, we designed all the exercise through play, and we had interaction activity and we grouped them in twos to see who are the sisters with the best chemistry. I think it’s always best when there is a group of kids learning and playing together because they are like sponges, so they absorb and learn things from one another very fast.

Q: The project was actually brought to Filmart in Hong Kong last year—a few friends there said when they got to know this project, and they already started to cry. Did you have some great encounters and great development at the market tour?

Ang: My film has a different roadmap from other films, because usually people go work-in-progress (WIP) when they are developing the project or when they haven’t finished shooting the film. But I had already fully shot the film and then I went to WIP. Back then, when I was pitching the film, no one showed any interest. In fact, there was a time that basically I had to give up my film because there was no producer who was interested in taking it up. So I finished the film and I went to the work in progress. We went to three different markets: Filmart in 2025, Golden Horse FPP in 2024, and Focus Asia in Udine, 2025. We’re trying to fundraise for some gap-financing and also trying to pull the film out for people to hear about it and to talk to sales agents and distributors across Asia as well as in Europe. It was really very helpful and useful because we got to know a lot more people.

The project has taken like 10 years; I wrote this 10 years ago. In 2019, I was supposed to go into production, but it didn’t happen. It had a lot of ups and downs and I was about to give up the project. I was very worried that if I make this film and then, you know, there’s always hiccups along the way. That’s why I think having the WIP felt like giving me the assurance to know that: okay, my project can slowly move forward.

Q: When did the shooting happen and how long did it take?

Ang: It was in June, 2024. We shot about 28 days. That was the summer holiday for the kids, so we had to catch them during this one month window.

In Singapore, some families speak Mandarin, some speak English. It depends. I don’t know whether I’m biased—the more down-to-earth families, they probably speak more Mandarin.

A very interesting observation that I had in the workshop is that there were kids who are more privileged and they get sent to drama schools and acting classes. They act differently from Xuan Jing, because they were taught a way of acting and they were just applying those techniques that they learned from their drama teachers or their acting teachers. Whereas Xuan Jing is more self-made. When we did the casting, we also wanted to find kids who suited the roles well, not really acting but just being themselves. And then from there, we tried to shape them to become more like the characters because it was important that the performances are naturalistic and it’s convincing.

Q: That’s why I find Xuan Jing very impressive because I can tell that she has a certain performative character. How did you give direction to her? For example, the debt-paying scene, those were very difficult lines for such a young kid to say, actually. So I wonder, how do tell her to deal with those very intense and sensitive scenes?

Ang: I can’t take all the credit for myself because I also feel like the parents have been very supportive. So I worked very closely with the parents to understand how they (the young actors) behave at school and also at home, and how they speak. First, the lines would be adjusted according to how they speak, so I give flexibility to the dialogue. And then for the crying scene, there were different methods because the crying was all different: sad crying, angry crying, many types of crying. So it really depended on what was for that scene and what I want to achieve from her. Sometimes I had to just tell her what this scene is for, and while I was telling her, I was also crying. So it’s like when she saw me crying, she could also feel for me. We had been spending a lot of time together. At certain time, she actually was imitating me. So I think she absorbed my energy. And then when I saw her, she was getting there, and then the camera was always ready and then we rolled the scene.

There were also scenes when crying became very difficult because I have too many crying scenes. She’s very good with exchanging the dynamic with the actors. So it’s very important for the adult actor to bring up the emotion for her. When she really could not cry, then she came to say: “Director, I cannot.” Then I said: “Then we don’t have to come tomorrow.” I was trying to tell her, this is what you have to do. Because she’s so close to me, I have never been fierce to her, I mean, that’s my last straw.

Q: That’s intimidating.

Ang: But then she knows. She knows what she’s doing because we had all this workshop; she’s acting as that role, and this is acting. And after acting, she just smiled and she liked it, actually.

So after the haircut crying scene, she came to me said: “You know, this is my first time crying on my own.” Actually that take that you saw on screen, that was like the first take. It was a one-take thing. Then we went for a safety take, that’s it. I mean, the haircut is irreversible. So she she’s smart and she takes pride in her work.

Q: I also wonder about the actor who plays Ah Tian, because she is even younger. Did she fully get the picture?

Ang: Actually when she was at the workshop, she was not paying attention most of the time. She wasn’t paying attention most of the time in the film, either. The first time I saw her, I already fell in love with her. She has this X factor that you just fall in love with her. The moment she enter the room, I was like, wow, she’s so funny. She’s just funny.

Q: The family issue in the film seems to be quite common actually, a breadwinner parent is splitting with the other irresponsible parent. Is that a kind of situation very familiar to you or your team?

Ang: The film is quite universal, it’s a childhood story, and I shot it from a child’s perspective. The story is specific to a Singapore family, but it applies to most families. I would say there’s some sort of gap between parents and the child. I felt like the children are not always taken seriously by the adult and they were not seen or heard by the adults.

Q: I love that Ah Girl was (as the Chinese title indicates) selling bubble gum at school, like this kind of talented genius in business. In the very beginning, I thought she was just doing it for fun until she reveals that she was actually doing it to help her family. It became bittersweet from that moment. Was it your intention to indicate that—as long as this girl grows up safely and passes this difficult childhood and puberty, and eventually turn into a grown-up—she will have an optimistic future? Is that a kind of hope that you have?

Ang: Yes, because I made three short films and they were all quite dark. Then my friend was like, can you make something less dark, please? So I was thinking maybe with my feature film, I want to make something more hopeful, but still has emotional truths to it.

Also, it has been 10 years since I started writing this story and I’ve been through a lot ups and downs. I was going through therapy and then during therapy, I looked at the script differently. I was like, this time maybe I should look at it and write a script in which I talk to my younger self—and what do I wanna tell my younger self? That’s one thing.

The second thing was, what do I want to tell my parents, one thing that I wanna tell my parents that I couldn’t tell them when I was a kid? So I can’t change some of the scenes for my parents. Because if they ever sit in a cinema, I hope they will see it and say, oh, this is something they might have done differently.

So the film is more about, childhood may shape who you are, but it doesn’t really define you, and it’s a choice: how you wanna move forward and let go of certain things. So that’s why the film is not really dark. I don’t want you to really keep crying in the cinema. I could have done it, because with kid actors, it’s actually easy. But I want it to be like a slice of life where you feel everything is very real. Life can be good and bad at same time, but it’s not always bad. We want to show that there’s always a silver lining, and life is beautiful in that way. I want people to watch the film and be like, oh, life is not so bad.

Q: This film impressed me because there aren’t so many Singapore pictures made each year because Singapore doesn’t have a very big film industry. In recent years, we have Anthony Chen who made a series of Singaporean films in Mandarin, which is quite nice. Now you have Ah Girl, which is mostly in Chinese as well. So do you mind elaborating on this choice of language?

Ang: It’s because I speak Mandarin at home with my family, my grandparents. Except my mother, but her English isn’t very good, so it makes her feel good to speak English with her. Also, I know that I wanted to show this film to the Chinese market. I think it’s because this is a personal film, so I wanted it to be close to what I envision.

Q: This is your debut feature. Do you have a second project that you are working on right now?

Ang: I’m hoping that I can do a trilogy for Ah Girl, because I did a trilogy of short films. I’m writing a story that can be a growing-up version of Ah Girl, teenager.

Q: So childhood, puberty, and then adulthood?

Ang: Yes.

Jenny S. Li

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