AMOEBA - Director Siyou Tan

In her feature film debut AMOEBA, writer and director Siyou Tan follows 16-year-old Choo as she befriends three rebellious classmates in their elite all-girls Chinese school. Their urge to resist authoritarian teachers and school doctrines drives them to discover the erased stories of mythical gangsters that ruled the streets of colonial Singapore. They decide to form their own gang. But how do you form a gang in modern Singapore, where even chewing gum is illegal? Loosely based on her previous short films, COLD CUT (2024), STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE (2021), Tan masterfully explores the dissonance of Eastern and Western culture in a sixty year-old country and the importance of Singapore’s societal expectations. Director Siyou Tan stops by to talk AMOEBA’s World Premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), assembling her superb cast of actors, and seeing AMOEBA as a story about four young women’s quest to find community and self-determination in a society where the prevailing narratives of subservience are imposed on young women.