Internationally Acclaimed Director Yeo Siew Hua Talks Surveillance & Singapore on the SOUNDS OF FILM
August 26, 2025 • 21 mins
The latest episode of The Sounds of Film spotlights director Yeo Siew Hua, whose new film Stranger Eyes is a gripping meditation on voyeurism, surveillance, and the fragility of family. Known internationally for his Locarno Golden Leopard–winning A Land Imagined, Yeo returns with a story that begins as a mystery about a missing child but evolves into a profound reflection on intimacy and identity in a world where someone is always watching.
Set in modern Singapore, Stranger Eyes follows a young couple who, after the disappearance of their baby daughter, discover unsettling video recordings of their most private moments. As the police place them under surveillance to catch the voyeur, the family begins to fracture under the weight of exposure. The film raises urgent questions about what it means to exist as an image, how constant observation reshapes our sense of self, and whether true privacy still exists in the age of digital connectedness.
On The Sounds of Film, host Tom Needham delves into Yeo’s creative process, the philosophical roots of his work, and the emotional layers that ground the story in lived human experience. The conversation explores Yeo’s cinematic blending of realism and surrealism, his collaboration with acclaimed actor Lee Kang-Sheng, and the ways in which Stranger Eyes resonates in today’s surveillance-saturated culture.
For more information about The Sounds of Film, please visit soundsoffilm.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you are listening to The Sounds of
Film. And on this episode of The
Sounds of Film, we welcome acclaimed director Yossiwa,
whose new film, Stranger Eyes, explores surveillance, voyeurism
and the fragile boundaries between seeing and being seen.
(00:21):
Following his award-winning A Land Imagined, he returns with a
haunting meditation on intimacy,loss and identity in an age
where someone's always being watched.
Yo, thank you so much for joining us on The Sounds of
Film. Hi, Tom.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I, I, I absolutely love
(00:44):
this film. I understand that the idea for
this film came to you many, manyyears ago.
Is that true? Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I even before my previous film, actually, I think about 10
years ago by now, yeah. And and what was it that made
you want to write about the topic of surveillance?
(01:11):
I guess living in a context where surveillance is very much,
yeah, left and center of my, my,yeah, my living, the society
that I live in, I think that hasbecome a very, I mean, when it's
so around you, sometimes you also forget that surveillance is
(01:37):
all around you. But then when you start noticing
it, you, you, you can't unnoticeit, you know what I mean?
So. Yeah, I guess it's it's
something that was really haunting me for a while.
Yeah, when you say that it's allaround us, what specifically do
you mean? I mean, when I first started the
(01:58):
project, maybe it was a little bit different from from now,
because I mean, I live in Singapore and Singapore is quite
heavily surveillanced city, citystate, right?
We're really small and you can'treally, you know, every 15
minutes you're gonna, you're gonna see a couple of
(02:19):
surveillance cameras staring at you.
So state surveillance is very heavy in, in Singapore.
So this was very apparent to me.And of course, it's also used as
a certain kind of like deterrence, right, for crime in,
in the country. Now we are talking about a a
whole new level of surveillance from from your phones to
(02:45):
everything around you actually your data and and everything,
right. But yeah, I guess it's a, it's a
slow but not so slow evolution of surveillance that has come to
be by by now. Many, many years ago, George
Orwell wrote 1984 and warned that Big Brother would be
(03:05):
watching all of us. It was sort of a warning and it
was considered dystopian, not a good thing.
How did you first start to view this surveillance state that
that many of us live under now, and have your views changed over
the years? I mean, personally, I'm not
(03:29):
someone who who, who likes getting surveillance all the
time. But at the same time, I feel
like society as a whole also hasbeen, has had shifting attitudes
towards surveillance. Whether is it just because we
are now just a lot more accustomed to used to or resign
(03:52):
to surveillance, right, that I feel like we're no longer
resisting the fact of surveillance all around us.
And actually we are talking about not just state
surveillance at this point, right?
We're talking about being watched by the state, big
(04:13):
corporations and each other through social media.
Let's not forget that. Yeah, So and, and, and now very
much, I mean, there's almost some willingness to be
surveillanced. Whether is it to for our own
convenience or for our own safety or yeah, there there is
(04:35):
almost a a social contract for this surveillance that it's
like, OK, you surveillance me and I will let you have my data
to give me better marketing, youknow, something like this, like
that. I mean, that relationship has
been shifting all this time, don't you think?
Yeah, absolutely. Many film directors have touched
(05:00):
on this subject before through the years.
Hitchcock for one. What are some of the films that
have some of these themes running through them that maybe
you looked at before making yourfilm?
It's hard to sort of throw out one specific film, but it is
(05:22):
very curious or not, or not so curious that like while we were
pitching the film for, for, for funding, we keep hearing
everybody having their own sort of referenced films for, for
surveillance, right? Whether is it Haneke's cachet,
(05:45):
Hitchcock's rear windows and as you mentioned, Coppola, you
know, conversation, I think lifeof others.
I mean, and then I really kind of, I had a moment, you know, I,
I realized that of course cinemais, is obsessed with watching
(06:07):
and being watched, right? This is, there's a whole history
of cinema that is about surveillance and voyeurism,
right? My film is just just sort of
contributing to, you know, that conversation, right?
Yeah. And, and it's, it's hard to say
(06:28):
what, which exactly was the one that we referenced.
But I think just both me and my,my cinematographer, we've, we've
pretty much watched most of these.
And if we didn't, by the time wewere making it, we were also
just watching these films. And then it sort of all came
together that way. Yeah, I didn't.
Yeah. Did did you ever have any kind
(06:49):
of personal experience in your own life that led you to making
this movie? I mean, aside from the fact that
I live in surveillance every day, I think I was, no, I, I, I,
I love, I like to sit around andwatch people, right?
(07:10):
I like to do some people watching in the parks, in the,
in public areas. I'm, I'm watching someone or, or
my neighbors actually, because if you look at the, the film, we
live in these kind of densely packed neighborhoods right to
these tall apartments. And I, I, I open the window and
(07:31):
I see my neighbor and I'm very sure my neighbor sees me, right?
Yeah. But I think it's just the fact
that as I was watching people giving them narratives,
sometimes even thinking, haha, I'm, they don't know I'm
watching them. But then at this, and then
there's a sudden realization that I am being watched all the
time by the by the cameras. And so I sort of had this idea
(07:56):
that, you know, they are watching me watching someone
else. So yeah, this is I, I think a
very a very starting point to the film of my experience of
this chain of gazes. That's interesting because I I
think people do simultaneously get creeped out if they feel
(08:17):
that someone's watching them. They feel like that's the wrong
thing to do. And yet, if people are probably
100% honest, they watch other people when given the
opportunity it it does seem to be a thing.
Only. If this idea came up so long
ago, why didn't you make this film first before you're out
(08:40):
your last film? Well, I think, I mean, we tried
and the funding didn't come together for this film.
I mean, part of me is thinking that, you know, when it comes to
public funding in Singapore, which a lot of our films depend
on, I think the topic was too sensitive for that point of time
(09:06):
with, with, with public funding and from Singapore, there are
certain certain areas of sensitivity that they don't
readily fund and support. And this was, you know, 10 years
ago where, you know, the, the topic, as I said, as of, of
surveillance has has not shiftedto where we are now.
(09:30):
And things were still still a little more harsh about, you
know, this, this stuff. I maybe now after the pandemic,
I would even like to time stamp this.
After the pandemic, a lot of that discourse have changed
during, you know, during the pandemic, we were readily kind
(09:52):
of self surveillancing ourselves, right?
Whether is it to tell everyone where we've been, who we've met,
you know, for the care of of others and ourselves.
And I don't think we are going back to a time before that.
Now we, we, we, we cohabit and we find ways to negotiate this
new reality. And I think now, you know, when
(10:16):
we repropose this project for for for the funding, it just
didn't feel maybe as taboo as when we first tried to get
funding for it. Yeah, maybe, Yeah.
I mean, all these are my own speculations.
Yeah, there's, I cannot confirm this, but yeah, it was it was a
(10:36):
lot harder trying to get fundingfor for the film 10 years ago.
I mean, aside from that, I also made another film in between
that was, I guess, successful. And so I think that really
helped also in in the confidenceof investors.
Yeah. Well, that's great.
(10:57):
You know, one of the things I don't want to give away too much
of the plot, but in this movie there's a young couple whose
child disappears and then you know it.
It feels in the beginning prettyconventional as they're they're
trying to put together clues to find out what happened to the to
(11:18):
the kid. But the movie is very surprising
because it takes a lot of twistsand turns and even the last 20%
of the movie, you know, one might have thought that it would
have ended earlier based on the conventional plot, but but you
(11:39):
go into some other directions. Was that something that was
important to you in terms of storytelling?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I like to take my my
films and and play with it a little and sort of take it to
where you you're not expecting it to go maybe.
(12:03):
And I think a film about watching, about taking the time
to really observe, it's really about opening up new
perspectives on things. And so, you know, of course I
understand my audience come to the film with their own sort of
(12:28):
preconceived judgements or biases.
And I think a film about sincereand patient watching or
observation, I would like my audience to experience a shift.
You know, I would like to my audience to, to experience an
(12:50):
opening up of the film to, you know, sometimes it's not as
simple as what you see on the surface.
Yeah, there there's so many things I really loved about this
film. The acting is amazing.
Your your lead male actor. He doesn't speak very much,
(13:11):
which is an unusual choice. Tell me a little bit about that
decision. Well, actually both of them
don't really. I mean, both of the male leads
doesn't really. So I this is actually a, a, a
both a pairing, right Of of of the male leads, one is the
younger that's played by UTI andher and the other the the older
(13:37):
played by Lee Kung Shen. And maybe for an international
audience, the older played by Lee Kung Shen is, is more
recognizable from the films of timing.
Yeah, Yeah, he is a real veteranand he he has this kind of
mastery of his body language because as as you mentioned, he
(14:02):
doesn't really speak so much as a voyeur.
But also, if you've noticed, if you've seen his his body of work
from all his other films, he is he plays not minimal dialogue
with his other roles. And that's why I think he has he
has mastered such a command in, in, in the way just he breathes
(14:26):
and he walks and and the little subtle, the subtleties, you
know, at the same time bringing in a certain kind of humanity of
his own into the, the, the what is supposedly a creepy voyeur,
you know, So, yeah, I, I was very moved by his performance.
He was. He's just an absolutely amazing
(14:48):
actor and a great person to workwith.
Just as well the the younger Ujiand her might be newer to
audiences in the West. He is, he is quite known in, in,
in Taiwan where his followers are.
And this, this guy is also an amazing, amazing actor.
(15:10):
He, he started out in a couple of films and now he's, he's
grown into his own. It's his own amazing actor.
And we we had a lot of fun making this film.
They both did an amazing job. One of the things that people
have come to love about your work is that you sort of
(15:30):
straddle realism and magical realism, and I was wondering if
you can explain a little bit your technique.
I think I'll I come from a very well.
You can call it magical like themagical context or magical
region in Southeast Asia, right?So magic does not come as
(16:02):
something strange to to put it in this way for us or something
otherworldly. Maybe we won't call it magic.
Maybe it's something that doesn't run directly in the
grain of of natural reality, right?
Something unexpected, something that, yeah, that is quite
(16:26):
invisible sometimes. And I think a lot of that comes
into the cinema and the cinema that we imagine, the cinema that
we idealized, the cinema that isboth perfect and flawed at the
same time. And I think that, you know, a
lot of this, whether we call it magic or otherworldly elements,
(16:48):
they, they come from some of thefears and anxieties that we want
to represent, whether is it the religious and spiritual fears
more than literally, or even thetechnocratic fears that, that,
that I personally have with with, with, with my society and
(17:08):
the country I come from. So all of that, I think, is what
I used to represent in my film through what might seem like
magical elements, but at the same time sort of fused into the
fabric of the reality, or at least the coherent reality in
the film. And I understand that besides
(17:31):
studying film, you also studied philosophy.
Is that correct? Yep.
And how would you say that your philosophical studies have
influenced your work? I think it definitely has
influenced my thoughts. I think I tend to look at any
(17:58):
any kind of issue or concept with a with a critical mind.
And I think I really try to plowthe depths of certain concepts.
And so maybe some people might say that my films are more
conceptual than then maybe sentimental or, or psychological
(18:20):
maybe. Huh.
But I mean, that's just things I've heard people say about my
films. Like it's, it's hard to self
analyze this. But yeah, I think I, I do take
on a lot of starting points thatare about the human condition
and maybe from a more conceptualpoint of view.
(18:42):
And I think a lot of that came from my, my, my, my practice,
my, my, my studies. Yeah.
Well, this film is being shown all over the world, including
here in America. And I was wondering, in
particular in America, is there anything that you hope our
audiences will take away from seeing your film?
(19:11):
For me, I think the most important thing at this point
that I wish to explore over and above the topics of surveillance
and voyeurism, actually what this film is trying to look into
is just the ways of seeing, of looking at each other.
(19:32):
I think this is, this is very important for me.
We live in a in the time where we are, it's unprecedented in
terms of how we are looking at people and how people are
looking at us, right? Again, I mentioned social media
and all the kind of surveillancethat around us, but at the same
(19:54):
time, are we really, are we really looking at people, right?
I like to say that sometimes we have replace.
Really. Observing and watching with
scrolling, you know, and I thinkwe have lost a certain kind of
(20:16):
faculty to really look at someone intently, sincerely.
And I think what this film is trying to either provoke or to,
to, to make that exercise for usto, to sort of come back to a
moment where we can really look at someone else, you know, with,
(20:40):
with intent and with, with patience.
Well, I want to highly recommendthat people try and see Stranger
Eyes. You know, I want to appreciate
you coming on this program and talking to us about your movie.
It's fantastic. Gives us a lot to think about.
It's it's really a gripping filmand it was such a pleasure
(21:02):
speaking with you. Thank you, Tom.
Thank you.
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you are listening to The Sounds of
Film. And on this episode of The
Sounds of Film, we welcome acclaimed director Yossiwa,
whose new film, Stranger Eyes, explores surveillance, voyeurism
and the fragile boundaries between seeing and being seen.
(00:21):
Following his award-winning A Land Imagined, he returns with a
haunting meditation on intimacy,loss and identity in an age
where someone's always being watched.
Yo, thank you so much for joining us on The Sounds of
Film. Hi, Tom.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I, I, I absolutely love
(00:44):
this film. I understand that the idea for
this film came to you many, manyyears ago.
Is that true? Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, I even before my previous film, actually, I think about 10
years ago by now, yeah. And and what was it that made
you want to write about the topic of surveillance?
(01:11):
I guess living in a context where surveillance is very much,
yeah, left and center of my, my,yeah, my living, the society
that I live in, I think that hasbecome a very, I mean, when it's
so around you, sometimes you also forget that surveillance is
(01:37):
all around you. But then when you start noticing
it, you, you, you can't unnoticeit, you know what I mean?
So. Yeah, I guess it's it's
something that was really haunting me for a while.
Yeah, when you say that it's allaround us, what specifically do
you mean? I mean, when I first started the
(01:58):
project, maybe it was a little bit different from from now,
because I mean, I live in Singapore and Singapore is quite
heavily surveillanced city, citystate, right?
We're really small and you can'treally, you know, every 15
minutes you're gonna, you're gonna see a couple of
(02:19):
surveillance cameras staring at you.
So state surveillance is very heavy in, in Singapore.
So this was very apparent to me.And of course, it's also used as
a certain kind of like deterrence, right, for crime in,
in the country. Now we are talking about a a
whole new level of surveillance from from your phones to
(02:45):
everything around you actually your data and and everything,
right. But yeah, I guess it's a, it's a
slow but not so slow evolution of surveillance that has come to
be by by now. Many, many years ago, George
Orwell wrote 1984 and warned that Big Brother would be
(03:05):
watching all of us. It was sort of a warning and it
was considered dystopian, not a good thing.
How did you first start to view this surveillance state that
that many of us live under now, and have your views changed over
the years? I mean, personally, I'm not
(03:29):
someone who who, who likes getting surveillance all the
time. But at the same time, I feel
like society as a whole also hasbeen, has had shifting attitudes
towards surveillance. Whether is it just because we
are now just a lot more accustomed to used to or resign
(03:52):
to surveillance, right, that I feel like we're no longer
resisting the fact of surveillance all around us.
And actually we are talking about not just state
surveillance at this point, right?
We're talking about being watched by the state, big
(04:13):
corporations and each other through social media.
Let's not forget that. Yeah, So and, and, and now very
much, I mean, there's almost some willingness to be
surveillanced. Whether is it to for our own
convenience or for our own safety or yeah, there there is
(04:35):
almost a a social contract for this surveillance that it's
like, OK, you surveillance me and I will let you have my data
to give me better marketing, youknow, something like this, like
that. I mean, that relationship has
been shifting all this time, don't you think?
Yeah, absolutely. Many film directors have touched
(05:00):
on this subject before through the years.
Hitchcock for one. What are some of the films that
have some of these themes running through them that maybe
you looked at before making yourfilm?
It's hard to sort of throw out one specific film, but it is
(05:22):
very curious or not, or not so curious that like while we were
pitching the film for, for, for funding, we keep hearing
everybody having their own sort of referenced films for, for
surveillance, right? Whether is it Haneke's cachet,
(05:45):
Hitchcock's rear windows and as you mentioned, Coppola, you
know, conversation, I think lifeof others.
I mean, and then I really kind of, I had a moment, you know, I,
I realized that of course cinemais, is obsessed with watching
(06:07):
and being watched, right? This is, there's a whole history
of cinema that is about surveillance and voyeurism,
right? My film is just just sort of
contributing to, you know, that conversation, right?
Yeah. And, and it's, it's hard to say
(06:28):
what, which exactly was the one that we referenced.
But I think just both me and my,my cinematographer, we've, we've
pretty much watched most of these.
And if we didn't, by the time wewere making it, we were also
just watching these films. And then it sort of all came
together that way. Yeah, I didn't.
Yeah. Did did you ever have any kind
(06:49):
of personal experience in your own life that led you to making
this movie? I mean, aside from the fact that
I live in surveillance every day, I think I was, no, I, I, I,
I love, I like to sit around andwatch people, right?
(07:10):
I like to do some people watching in the parks, in the,
in public areas. I'm, I'm watching someone or, or
my neighbors actually, because if you look at the, the film, we
live in these kind of densely packed neighborhoods right to
these tall apartments. And I, I, I open the window and
(07:31):
I see my neighbor and I'm very sure my neighbor sees me, right?
Yeah. But I think it's just the fact
that as I was watching people giving them narratives,
sometimes even thinking, haha, I'm, they don't know I'm
watching them. But then at this, and then
there's a sudden realization that I am being watched all the
time by the by the cameras. And so I sort of had this idea
(07:56):
that, you know, they are watching me watching someone
else. So yeah, this is I, I think a
very a very starting point to the film of my experience of
this chain of gazes. That's interesting because I I
think people do simultaneously get creeped out if they feel
(08:17):
that someone's watching them. They feel like that's the wrong
thing to do. And yet, if people are probably
100% honest, they watch other people when given the
opportunity it it does seem to be a thing.
Only. If this idea came up so long
ago, why didn't you make this film first before you're out
(08:40):
your last film? Well, I think, I mean, we tried
and the funding didn't come together for this film.
I mean, part of me is thinking that, you know, when it comes to
public funding in Singapore, which a lot of our films depend
on, I think the topic was too sensitive for that point of time
(09:06):
with, with, with public funding and from Singapore, there are
certain certain areas of sensitivity that they don't
readily fund and support. And this was, you know, 10 years
ago where, you know, the, the topic, as I said, as of, of
surveillance has has not shiftedto where we are now.
(09:30):
And things were still still a little more harsh about, you
know, this, this stuff. I maybe now after the pandemic,
I would even like to time stamp this.
After the pandemic, a lot of that discourse have changed
during, you know, during the pandemic, we were readily kind
(09:52):
of self surveillancing ourselves, right?
Whether is it to tell everyone where we've been, who we've met,
you know, for the care of of others and ourselves.
And I don't think we are going back to a time before that.
Now we, we, we, we cohabit and we find ways to negotiate this
new reality. And I think now, you know, when
(10:16):
we repropose this project for for for the funding, it just
didn't feel maybe as taboo as when we first tried to get
funding for it. Yeah, maybe, Yeah.
I mean, all these are my own speculations.
Yeah, there's, I cannot confirm this, but yeah, it was it was a
(10:36):
lot harder trying to get fundingfor for the film 10 years ago.
I mean, aside from that, I also made another film in between
that was, I guess, successful. And so I think that really
helped also in in the confidenceof investors.
Yeah. Well, that's great.
(10:57):
You know, one of the things I don't want to give away too much
of the plot, but in this movie there's a young couple whose
child disappears and then you know it.
It feels in the beginning prettyconventional as they're they're
trying to put together clues to find out what happened to the to
(11:18):
the kid. But the movie is very surprising
because it takes a lot of twistsand turns and even the last 20%
of the movie, you know, one might have thought that it would
have ended earlier based on the conventional plot, but but you
(11:39):
go into some other directions. Was that something that was
important to you in terms of storytelling?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I like to take my my
films and and play with it a little and sort of take it to
where you you're not expecting it to go maybe.
(12:03):
And I think a film about watching, about taking the time
to really observe, it's really about opening up new
perspectives on things. And so, you know, of course I
understand my audience come to the film with their own sort of
(12:28):
preconceived judgements or biases.
And I think a film about sincereand patient watching or
observation, I would like my audience to experience a shift.
You know, I would like to my audience to, to experience an
(12:50):
opening up of the film to, you know, sometimes it's not as
simple as what you see on the surface.
Yeah, there there's so many things I really loved about this
film. The acting is amazing.
Your your lead male actor. He doesn't speak very much,
(13:11):
which is an unusual choice. Tell me a little bit about that
decision. Well, actually both of them
don't really. I mean, both of the male leads
doesn't really. So I this is actually a, a, a
both a pairing, right Of of of the male leads, one is the
younger that's played by UTI andher and the other the the older
(13:37):
played by Lee Kung Shen. And maybe for an international
audience, the older played by Lee Kung Shen is, is more
recognizable from the films of timing.
Yeah, Yeah, he is a real veteranand he he has this kind of
mastery of his body language because as as you mentioned, he
(14:02):
doesn't really speak so much as a voyeur.
But also, if you've noticed, if you've seen his his body of work
from all his other films, he is he plays not minimal dialogue
with his other roles. And that's why I think he has he
has mastered such a command in, in, in the way just he breathes
(14:26):
and he walks and and the little subtle, the subtleties, you
know, at the same time bringing in a certain kind of humanity of
his own into the, the, the what is supposedly a creepy voyeur,
you know, So, yeah, I, I was very moved by his performance.
He was. He's just an absolutely amazing
(14:48):
actor and a great person to workwith.
Just as well the the younger Ujiand her might be newer to
audiences in the West. He is, he is quite known in, in,
in Taiwan where his followers are.
And this, this guy is also an amazing, amazing actor.
(15:10):
He, he started out in a couple of films and now he's, he's
grown into his own. It's his own amazing actor.
And we we had a lot of fun making this film.
They both did an amazing job. One of the things that people
have come to love about your work is that you sort of
(15:30):
straddle realism and magical realism, and I was wondering if
you can explain a little bit your technique.
I think I'll I come from a very well.
You can call it magical like themagical context or magical
region in Southeast Asia, right?So magic does not come as
(16:02):
something strange to to put it in this way for us or something
otherworldly. Maybe we won't call it magic.
Maybe it's something that doesn't run directly in the
grain of of natural reality, right?
Something unexpected, something that, yeah, that is quite
(16:26):
invisible sometimes. And I think a lot of that comes
into the cinema and the cinema that we imagine, the cinema that
we idealized, the cinema that isboth perfect and flawed at the
same time. And I think that, you know, a
lot of this, whether we call it magic or otherworldly elements,
(16:48):
they, they come from some of thefears and anxieties that we want
to represent, whether is it the religious and spiritual fears
more than literally, or even thetechnocratic fears that, that,
that I personally have with with, with, with my society and
(17:08):
the country I come from. So all of that, I think, is what
I used to represent in my film through what might seem like
magical elements, but at the same time sort of fused into the
fabric of the reality, or at least the coherent reality in
the film. And I understand that besides
(17:31):
studying film, you also studied philosophy.
Is that correct? Yep.
And how would you say that your philosophical studies have
influenced your work? I think it definitely has
influenced my thoughts. I think I tend to look at any
(17:58):
any kind of issue or concept with a with a critical mind.
And I think I really try to plowthe depths of certain concepts.
And so maybe some people might say that my films are more
conceptual than then maybe sentimental or, or psychological
(18:20):
maybe. Huh.
But I mean, that's just things I've heard people say about my
films. Like it's, it's hard to self
analyze this. But yeah, I think I, I do take
on a lot of starting points thatare about the human condition
and maybe from a more conceptualpoint of view.
(18:42):
And I think a lot of that came from my, my, my, my practice,
my, my, my studies. Yeah.
Well, this film is being shown all over the world, including
here in America. And I was wondering, in
particular in America, is there anything that you hope our
audiences will take away from seeing your film?
(19:11):
For me, I think the most important thing at this point
that I wish to explore over and above the topics of surveillance
and voyeurism, actually what this film is trying to look into
is just the ways of seeing, of looking at each other.
(19:32):
I think this is, this is very important for me.
We live in a in the time where we are, it's unprecedented in
terms of how we are looking at people and how people are
looking at us, right? Again, I mentioned social media
and all the kind of surveillancethat around us, but at the same
(19:54):
time, are we really, are we really looking at people, right?
I like to say that sometimes we have replace.
Really. Observing and watching with
scrolling, you know, and I thinkwe have lost a certain kind of
(20:16):
faculty to really look at someone intently, sincerely.
And I think what this film is trying to either provoke or to,
to, to make that exercise for usto, to sort of come back to a
moment where we can really look at someone else, you know, with,
(20:40):
with intent and with, with patience.
Well, I want to highly recommendthat people try and see Stranger
Eyes. You know, I want to appreciate
you coming on this program and talking to us about your movie.
It's fantastic. Gives us a lot to think about.
It's it's really a gripping filmand it was such a pleasure
(21:02):
speaking with you. Thank you, Tom.
Thank you.
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