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This Longing

BAFICI 2009
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Info
Year:

2008
Original Title:

This Longing
País:

Malasia 
Director:

Azharr Rudin
Color:

Color
Format:

Video: Digibeta
Duration:

122 min
Cast:
  • Saeful Nazhif Satria, Shahronizam, Maya Karin
Production:
  • DIRECCIÓN: Azharr Rudin
  • GUIÓN: Azharr Rudin
  • FOTOGRAFÍA: Sidi Saleh
  • MONTAJE: Azharr Rudin
  • PRODUCCIÓN: Tan Chui Mui, Amir Muhammad

Synopsis

During the 80s, in Johor Baharu, a city on the south of Malaysia in the border with Singapore, the Bukit Chagar, an apartment building for people with low incomes, was inaugurated. Because of its impressive, high architecture, which allowed for an aerial view of a great part of the Singaporean city and coast, the building became an observatory as well as an identity mark for Johor Buharu. Before it was demolished, director Azharr Rudin, regular editor of Amir Muhammad's films, built up a fiction set in that building which played a sentimental part in his childhood. Or, better yet, two fictions: because This Longing is two films in one, a divisible story that establishes a mysterious syntax, to demonstrate once more that Malayan cinema reaches subtlety through the route of simplicity. The first part follows Sidi, a kid who, after the enigmatic fleeing of her mother, has to be looked after by his somewhat indifferent father. Thus, Sidi manages to evade schoolwork to wander the labyrinthine corridors of the building, to drift through the streets, and to go on nighttime fishing trips with his father. The second story, somewhat meta-referential, follows Riza, a former inhabitant of the building who comes back to look for her father with a video camera to capture the present and, in some way, the memories of her past.