20th Anniversary New York Asian Film Festival

Jul 15-31, 2022

FilmsGuestsTalks & EventsSchedule & TicketsProgram Book

Photo: Courtesy of Eko Pictures

World Premiere

#LookAtMe

In a tour-de-force performance, yao (fka Thomas Pang of Tiong Bahru Social Club, NYAFF 2021) plays renegade vlogger Sean and his gay identical twin Ricky, supercharging this exhilarating, damning and morally essential fable about social media celebrity, cancel culture and the erosion of human rights. The brothers lead happy-go-lucky lives with their free-thinking single mom until they witness a popular televangelist demonizing homosexuality. After Sean posts a scathing video attacking the self-proclaimed holy man, he goes viral, soon landing himself a spot in jail and leaving his mom and Ricky to fight an uphill battle for justice. Ricocheting entertainingly between a multiplicity of moods and genres, Ken Kwek’s indictment of backward thinking and barbaric laws veers from the deadly serious to the colorfully camp without once losing sight of its humanity.

Director: Ken Kwek
Cast: yao, Pam Oei
Languages: English, Mandarin, Malay with English subtitles
2022; 108 min.

SCHEDULE:

Saturday July 23, 4:00pm
Film at Lincoln Center

Director Ken Kwek and Actors yao (Thomas Pang) and Pam Oei will attend the screening.

Ken Kwek

Ken Kwek is an award-winning Singaporean filmmaker and playwright, known for his irreverent comedies and social satires. His short film anthology Sex.Violence.FamilyValues (2013) was banned in Singapore but won awards internationally. His first feature, Unlucky Plaza (2014), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won Best Director at the Tehran Jasmine Film Festival. Kwek’s plays include "This Is What Happens to Pretty Girls" (2019), praised by The New York Times for its unflinching examination of sexual misconduct in schools and the workplace. #LookAtMe is Kwek's second feature film.

yao

yao (formerly Thomas Pang) is an actor and theater director of Chinese and Filipino descent, and Best Actor winner in 2018 at Singapore’s Life! Theatre Awards. He made his film debut in Tiong Bahru Social Club (2020) and joined us for a Q&A session after the NYAFF 2021 screening. yao is currently performing at the Chautauqua Theater Conservatory in Through the Eyes of Holly Germaine, and will graduate from the MFA acting program at the Yale School of Drama in 2023.

Pam Oei

Pam Oei is an actor, director, singer and comedian in Singapore, where she is known as one of the Dim Sum Dollies, a popular comedy cabaret act. Her film credits include Peggy Su! (BBC Films, 1996), Forever Fever (Miramax, 1998) The Blue Mansion (2008), and Ken Kwek’s Porn Masala (2012) and Unlucky Plaza (2014). She has received multiple nominations for Best Actress at the Asian Television Awards, and won both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories at the 2001 Life! Theatre Awards.