Aamir Khan to Receive Screen Icon Award as Singapore Film Festival Opens With Hur Jin-ho’s ‘The Assassin(s)’

The Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) will present its Screen Icon Award to Indian actor, director and producer Aamir Khan at its 37th edition, with a 25th-anniversary Special Presentation screening of “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” alongside director Ashutosh Gowariker.

The festival opens with South Korean thriller “The Assassin(s),” directed by Hur Jin-ho and starring Yoo Hae-jin, Park Hae-il and Lee Min-ho. Hur and supporting cast members Shim Eun-kyung and Park Sung-hoon will attend the opening.

As previously announced, SGIFF will give its Cinema Honorary Award, the festival’s top prize for lasting contributions to Asian cinema, to Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu, with his film “Look Back” screening as part of the program.

SGIFF executive director Jeremy Chua said the edition brings some of the most respected talents and consequential work being made across Asia to Singapore. “Around it, we have also reconsidered how audiences encounter a festival with new presentation formats and points of entry, a ticketing platform that is markedly more intuitive, an industry programme expanded into a resource centre for artists, technicians and storytellers at every stage of practice, and a new free-to-attend section at the intersection of creativity and technology, attending to the forms storytelling will take next,” Chua said.

SGIFF’s “In Conversation With” dialogue series will also feature Shim Eun-kyung, filmmaker Peter Chan Ho-sun and Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong, who will take part in a post-screening dialogue tied to his first acting role in “My Name Ain’t Suzie.” Korean New Wave director Yim Soon-rye will serve as jury head of the Asian Feature Film Competition, while Fukada Koji, director of “Nagi Notes,” cinematographers Ashizawa Akiko and Tom Harari, and director Jacob Cheung will also take part in the festival.

The lineup spotlights more than 25 Singapore productions and co-productions that have earned recognition at festivals including Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice and Melbourne. Among them, “Ah Girl” star Ong Xuan Jing won best actress at the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s Young Cinema Competition, while director Ang Geck Geck won the Youth Jury Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Nelson Yeo’s “The House on the Moon” premiered in competition at Locarno, and Tan Si En of Momo Film Co. co-produced “Nagi Notes,” which premiered in competition at Cannes. Daniel Hui edited “Sleep No More” and “The Burning Giants,” which premiered at the Berlin and Venice film festivals, respectively. Anthony Chen of Giraffe Pictures co-produced “Four Seasons in Java,” and Lai Weijie of E&W Films co-produced “9 Temples to Heaven,” which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

SGIFF program director Thong Kay Wee said, “Singapore’s film industry is enjoying its hard-earned recognition on the world stage. This year’s selection of Singapore films and co-productions reflects an increasingly diverse creative ecosystem that is producing internationally competitive work. We are proud to share that many of these filmmakers found their first mentorships through SGIFF, so sharing their stories and work on Singapore screens this year is, in that sense, a homecoming.”

The SGIFF Film Fund also returns after a hiatus. The Tan Ean Kiam Foundation, previously a backer of the Southeast Asian Documentary Grant, will now also support the Southeast Asian Short Film Grant, with both programs falling under the Tan Ean Kiam Foundation-SGIFF banner as SEA-Doc and SEA-Shorts. SEA-Doc shifts this cycle to backing feature documentaries in late edit or finishing stages, while SEA-Shorts continues supporting emerging Southeast Asian filmmakers. The open call for both grants runs Nov. 5 to Dec. 5.

The festival will introduce a Junior Explorers section with sensory-friendly screenings for younger audiences, opening with stop-motion feature “Brave Cat.” Its Undercurrent section will open with three live performances: Taiwanese puppetry piece “Corporeal Forms: Four Stories,” live video gaming work “The Compression Zone” and analog film and music performance “Imagination + The Rest Is My Ghost.” SGIFF Pro, the festival’s industry arm, adds three new programs this year: Parallax, a free public program on filmmaking and immersive technology; Off Campus, a student initiative connecting classroom training with industry exposure; and the Pitching Forum, aimed at co-production between Singapore and international partners.

The festival, supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), runs Oct. 21 to Nov. 1.