Ah Girl, the first feature by Singaporean director Ang Geck Geck, took the top prize in the Asian Feature Film Competition when the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) handed out its Silver Screen Awards on Saturday 31 October. Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat was named best director for No Good Men, and the jury, headed by South Korean director Yim Soon-rye, split the best performance prize between Pushpa Thing Lama and Putri Marino. The ceremony at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre came on the penultimate day of the 37th edition, which ends on Sunday 1 November.
Key facts
- Best Asian feature film: Ah Girl (Ang Geck Geck; Singapore, Malaysia), a feature debut developed at the SGIFF Southeast Asian Film Lab in 2015
- Best director: Shahrbanoo Sadat, No Good Men; Special Jury Prize: Burn (Makoto Nagahisa, Japan)
- Best performance, shared: Pushpa Thing Lama for Elephants in the Fog and Putri Marino for Four Seasons in Java
- Best Southeast Asian short film: Golden Island (Arief Budiman; Indonesia, Singapore)
- Honorary awards earlier in the festival went to Hirokazu Koreeda (Cinema Honorary Award) and Aamir Khan (Screen Icon Award)
The feature competition
Ah Girl is set in Singapore in 1994. Its seven-year-old heroine, Swee Swee, insists on her Chinese name, sells contraband chewing gum to classmates and is passed between a mother worn down by work and a father who rarely turns up as her parents separate. SGIFF’s programme notes say the film is shot at a child’s eye level in a 4:3 frame. It runs 99 minutes, is in Mandarin and English, and played as a Singapore premiere after winning the Youth Jury Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam. Ang is an alumna of the Busan Asian Film Academy; her short Broken Crayon (2012) won best short film at the Singapore Short Film Awards.
Sadat’s No Good Men, original title Kabul Jan, is a co-production between Germany, France, Norway, Denmark and Afghanistan. Set in Kabul shortly before the Taliban returned to power in 2021, it follows a camerawoman whose job, family and freedom are suddenly at risk. It opened the Berlinale this year, and Sadat has been based in Germany since 2021, according to the festival’s notes. Her earlier features are Wolf and Sheep, which premiered at Cannes in 2016, and The Orphanage (2019).
The Special Jury Prize went to Burn, the second feature by Japan’s Makoto Nagahisa, which premiered at Sundance. Nagahisa had already won awards there, for the short And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool (2017) and the feature We Are Little Zombies (2019).
The shared performance award went to Pushpa Thing Lama, who plays a member of Nepal’s third-gender Kinnar community looking for her missing daughter in Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog, and to Putri Marino in Kamila Andini’s Four Seasons in Java, in which she plays a woman returning to her home town after two decades in prison.
Three of the four films behind those prizes are multi-country co-productions with European partners, on SGIFF’s own credits. Four Seasons in Java lists seven countries, among them Saudi Arabia and Singapore; Elephants in the Fog lists five (Nepal, France, Germany, Brazil and Norway); No Good Men lists five. Norway appears on all three.
The rest of the feature jury were Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong, Pakistani director and producer Sabiha Sumar, and William Phuan, chairman of the Asian Film Archive. The shorts were judged by Thai producer Cattleya Paosrijaroen, Filipino film scholar Patrick Campos and the Singapore-born, Taiwan-based director Chiang Wei Liang, whose debut feature Mongrel (2024) won best Asian feature film at SGIFF, according to his jury biography.
Shorts, audience and industry prizes
In the Southeast Asian Short Film Competition, Yogyakarta-based artist Arief Budiman’s Golden Island (Kota emas) won best Southeast Asian short. The 22-minute film, about a videographer from Java and another from Papua making a film about Papua together, competed at Rotterdam. Thailand’s Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, whose debut feature A Useful Ghost won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes in 2025, was named best director for the short The Bovine Comedy, according to Variety’s list of winners. The Audience Choice Award went to Second Life, Second Skin, a programme of five shorts from the Singapore Panorama section.
Four projects won prizes at the SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum on 30 October, Variety reports, led by Agape from Yamaguchi Shin and Miyahara Takuya. The other shorts and pitching winners are in the full list below.
The festival presented its Cinema Honorary Award to Hirokazu Koreeda on 24 October and its Screen Icon Award to Aamir Khan on 22 October.
Full list of winners
Asian Feature Film Competition – Best Asian feature film: Ah Girl, Ang Geck Geck (Singapore, Malaysia) – Best director: Shahrbanoo Sadat, No Good Men (Germany, France, Norway, Denmark, Afghanistan) – Best performance (shared): Pushpa Thing Lama, Elephants in the Fog (Nepal, France, Germany, Brazil, Norway); Putri Marino, Four Seasons in Java (Indonesia, France, Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Poland) – Special Jury Prize: Burn, Makoto Nagahisa (Japan)
Southeast Asian Short Film Competition – Best Southeast Asian short film: Golden Island (Kota emas), Arief Budiman (Indonesia, Singapore) – Best director: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, The Bovine Comedy – Special Jury Prize: ‘Vaterland’ or A Bule Named Yanto, Berthold Wahjudi – Best performance: Sarah Lingam, Flame of the Forest – Best Singapore short film: Singapore God, Exyl
Audience Choice Award – Singapore Panorama Programme 2, Second Life, Second Skin: Kiss Me Climax (Shara Tay), Subterranea (Ash Goh Hua), Reanimator (Syahmi Iman), Orang Minyak (Leon Cheo), Encik (Ewan Leong)
SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum – SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum Award: Agape, Yamaguchi Shin and Miyahara Takuya – SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum Award (Asian Producers Network): Dear Son An, Lệ Diễm Hà – SGIFF Abroad Award supported by Sony: Beg, Borrow, Steal, Tong Khoon Mun and Zhou Ke Xin – SGIFF Abroad Award: Primal, Sam Chua Weishi and Rein Maychaelson
Honorary awards – Cinema Honorary Award: Hirokazu Koreeda (presented 24 October) – Screen Icon Award: Aamir Khan (presented 22 October)
Shorts subcategory, audience-programme and pitching winners are from Variety’s list; the SGIFF awards page gives the feature winners, the best Southeast Asian short and the audience award.
Our reading
The headline prize closes a loop that SGIFF built itself. Ah Girl went through the festival’s Southeast Asian Film Lab 11 years ago, on to a prize at Rotterdam, and back to win the main competition. For a festival that leans on its lab, academy and pitching forum, a home-grown winner developed in its own programme is the clearest evidence it can offer that the pipeline works, and it gives this year’s pitching winners a precedent to point to.
The other feature prizes went mostly to films financed across borders, with European partners and Norway on every one of them. For producers in the region, that is the finance route this jury ended up rewarding. The next big Asian awards night is in Tokyo on 4 November, where the International Film Festival’s jury is chaired by Rolf de Heer. It follows the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, where Guria won best film, and a Busan market that put Asian distributors and investors on the same agenda.
Sources
- Singapore International Film Festival, Silver Screen Awards winners and jury
- SGIFF film pages: Ah Girl, No Good Men, Burn, Elephants in the Fog, Four Seasons in Java, Golden Island
- Variety, full list of winners including short-film and SGIFF Pro prizes (31 October 2026)
- Asian Movie Pulse, SGIFF 2026 winners