Inside Girl: The film that shook SGIFF’s opening night this year

On 27th November 2025, the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) opened its 36th edition with a glamorous crowd and a clear message: Singapore’s appetite for bold, intimate, and uncompromising cinema has never been stronger. This year’s festival – the country’s longest-running and most influential film event since its founding in 1987 – brings together 121 films from 45 countries, spotlighting an ambitious mix of global discoveries and homegrown voices.

The honour of opening night went to Girl, the quietly devastating directorial debut of industry veteran and screen icon, Shu Qi. Fresh off its Venice premiere and her Best Director win in Busan, the semi-autobiographical film set the festival’s tone with its unflinching look at the emotional legacies we inherit and the silences we grow up learning to endure.

Set in 1980s Taipei, Girl follows ten-year-old Hsiao-lee, played with exquisite restraint by Bai Xiao-Ying. She is a child who moves through life carefully – returning home each day to the bitterness of her long-suffering mother Ajuan, and hiding in a zip-up closet at night to escape the violent outbursts of her father. Ajuan, portrayed by 9m88, is one of the film’s tragic anchors: a woman overwhelmed by poverty, disappointment, and domestic instability, struggling to parent through wounds she has never healed from. Together, mother and daughter form the fragile emotional core of the story marked by tension, longing, and small, aching moments of hope.

Hsiao-lee’s world briefly brightens when Li-li, a precocious transfer student, bursts into her life with colour and curiosity, offering a glimpse of the freedom and joy she has never known. But their friendship triggers a rupture at home that changes Hsiao-lee’s life, echoing the film’s central themes of trauma, survival, and the slow, uneven path toward acceptance.

It’s a fitting opening title for SGIFF, a festival long celebrated for championing independent and Southeast Asian cinema while nurturing new generations of filmmakers through its industry arm, SGIFF Pro. With more than 30 Singaporean films and co-productions featured this year, the festival continues to evolve into a cultural meeting point for storytellers across the region.

In a rare opportunity, we spoke with Shu Qi and her muses – 9m88 and Bai Xiao-Ying – for a deeper look into the making of Girl.

Congratulations on your win. After three decades acting across every genre, you had several concepts for your directorial debut. Why did you choose Girl – such a personal and intimate story – as your first film?

Shu Qi: Honestly, directing never crossed my mind until Hou Hsiao-hsien asked me – twice – and that planted the seed. I explored three ideas, including a horror-action film and a modern love story, but they never matched what I envisioned. Girl was the one that felt closest to my own childhood.

Everything I learned from Director Hou gave me the confidence to shape it in my own way. And when I was on the Venice jury in 2023, watching so many great films, I told myself: “If I don’t start now, I may never do it.” That’s when Girl was born.

What was it like for you to take on the role of director after so many years in front of the camera?

Shu Qi: Directing felt like juggling a hundred roles at once – exhausting but incredibly rewarding. I never felt like a ‘boss’, just part of a hardworking crew, and the team’s professionalism made even the toughest days manageable.

As for Xiao-Ying and 9m88 – what was it like being directed by Shu Qi, and how did her directing style help you in your role?

9m88: As an actress, Shu Qi knows exactly how to guide performers. My background is in music. But Shu Qi communicates with such care and clarity, and her direction style really resonated with me. She’s an amazing director.

Bai Xiao-Ying: Working with someone as accomplished as Shu Qi was intimidating at first, but she immediately put me at ease. She brings warmth and energy to the set, and guides us gently into our roles. Even when she pushes you to do better, she does it with encouragement, pointing out what you did well before helping you improve. Her support truly warmed my heart.

In Girl, reconciliation is portrayed in a subtle, complex way. How did you approach that theme, and how does it connect to your own experiences growing up?

Shu Qi: The film isn’t about solely about reconciliation, because life is never that simple. We all carry our histories, and trauma doesn’t just disappear with time – even ten or twenty years later. For Hsiao-lee (a repressed child caught between an abusive mother and a violent father), coming home as an adult doesn’t mean she can suddenly forgive her parents. The wounds stay. What changes is how you learn to live with them without letting them pull you down.

In my own life, my father is still an alcoholic, so very little has changed for my mother. I’ve spoken openly about my childhood for years, and she’s grown used to it.

A lot of that is carried through Bai Xiao-Ying, who portrayed Hsiao-lee. What was it like expressing such heavy emotions with so little dialogue?

Bai Xiao-Ying: Dialogue usually helps me enter a role, but with Girl I had to rely entirely on my eyes, breathing, and small physical movements to show what Hsiao-lee was feeling. It was challenging, but it pushed me to express her emotions in a more delicate, instinctive way.

And for 9m88, who plays Ajuan – a mother trapped by circumstance – the film’s portrait of women’s struggles feels timeless. Though Girl is set in the late ’80s, its expectations of women still ring true today. What parallels do you see between then and now?

9m88: Even though the film is set in the late ’80s, its themes feel very familiar today. Women have always faced expectations about how we should behave or fit into certain stereotypes, and society still pressures us to conform.

In the film, you see domestic violence more openly, but toxic relationships still exist now – just in different forms. Women need to know they can walk away from anything that harms them. Gaslighting and subtle pressures still happen today, especially when we don’t follow the ‘acceptable’ path. So even though Girl takes place decades ago, its struggles remain very present in 2025.

You’ve spoken about carrying certain fears into adulthood. How did your own experiences shape the message of Girl, and what do you hope audiences take away about trauma and healing?

Shu Qi: I still carry fears like claustrophobia and a fear of heights – trauma stays with you. But I don’t believe it should hold us back. We can’t control what happened when we were young, but as adults we can choose how to move forward. That’s what Girl explores through Charlie: she can’t erase her past, but she can choose a better path.

There’s also a message for adults – if you’re not ready for children, think carefully. And for parents, reflect on what responsible, thoughtful parenting really means.

Just for fun before we wrap up – what three words or phrases would each of you use to describe the film?

Shu Qi: Acceptance, facing it head-on, letting go.

9m88: Trauma, resilience, and breaking through.

Bai Xiao-Ying: Powerful, warm, and hopeful.