Directed by Liao Jiekai
Produced by Lyn-Anne Loy and Emily Kwong
Cinematography by Derrick Loo
Original Music by Cliff Retallick
Art Direction by Tan Hong Guan
Editing by Lee Mi Sa

Key Cast: Jaclyn Chia, Jason Hui, Ashhey Mak, Annie Neo


Sypnosis:

Jin is a soldier who often questions why he is serving mandatory military. In a willful feat of escapism, he AWOLed
and ran away from service. Yun is a teenage girl who is facing the sudden death of her foster mother. As she
juggles between her bitter feelings toward her Foster mother and her new found freedom, she chooses to run away
from the place she lived for two years. As the two protagonists deal with their complex situations in the
contemporary Singapore Housing estate, their surroundings retreat into a surreal landscape of irony and menace.


Director's Statement:

Clouds in a shell is a film that explores themes of urban solitude, escapism and family. Using an environment that
is very familiar to me – that of a Singapore contemporary housing landscape, I attempt to carve out an experience
that is at times sinister, and at times nostalgic. By the converging of two stories, I also want to underline that
these themes and experiences are universal, even for two strangers who never knew each other.

The story of Jin is semi-autobiographical; as an ex-soldier who served two and a half years of mandatory military
service, everyone around me sort of submit to it as a national ritual that all man has to experience, the bitterness
suppressed and the unhappiness hidden. Hence Jin’s escapism became an expression of a personal fantasy that
is perhaps inherent in many soldiers like him.

Yun’s story grew out of an interest to explore the notion of death, and the complicity of the bitter-sweet struggle
and blessing; yet the rivers of time that passes me by seem to countdown towards the possible day when someone
I love will die. Yun’s story is for me, perhaps a personal escapism and denial of death.
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