Eric Khoo Brews Up Singapore Anthology Film ‘Kopitiam Days’

EXCLUSIVE: Singapore producer, director and showrunner Eric Khoo is putting together an anthology film, Kopitiam Days, with six local directors including Locarno Golden Leopard winner Yeo Siew Hua (A Land Imagined). 

Also directing segments of the film are Shoki Lin, M. Raihan Halim, Tan Siyou, Don Aravind and Ong Kuo Sin. Khoo says the six segments will explore “what it means to live, work and love on this island we call home” in the year in which Singapore celebrates the 60th year of its founding. 

Khoo is serving as executive producer and creative director on the anthology through his Singapore-based production house Zhao Wei Films, with Fran Borgia, founder of Singapore’s Akanga Film Asia, and Lim Teck, managing director of Singapore producer-distributor Clover Films, also on board as executive producers. Zhao Wei’s Tan Fong Cheng will also produce. 

Scheduled to start production at the end of April, the $1M film is supported by Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the Singapore Film Commission (SFC).

Kopitiams are a type of coffee shop found across Southeast Asia and serve as a creative starting point and thematic thread throughout the six films. 

“I was sitting in my favourite kopitiam last fall, sipping on my kopi o kosong (black coffee) and eating soft boiled eggs when the idea struck me – an anthology to celebrate Singapore’s 60th anniversary,” Khoo told Deadline. “My brief to the directors was simply that the title is ‘Kopitiam Days’ – tell a short story from your heart and we let the creative individuals take it from there.”

Yeo Siew Hua also recently directed Stranger Eyes, which premiered at Venice film festival, while M. Raihan Halim’s credits include La Luna, Singapore’s entry for Best International Feature at this year’s Oscars. Shoki Lin has directed several shorts that have played at international festivals, including Adam, which was selected for Cannes Cinefondation in 2019, while Tan Siyou is working on her first feature, Amoeba.

Don Aravind works between film, series and commercials, including long-running Singapore series Tanglin and an episode of HBO Asia’s Food Lore. Ong Kuo Sin has worked as an executive producer on Tanglin and also directed films including Golden Horse Award-nominated Number 1. 

Khoo, a Cannes regular whose last film as director, Spirit World, closed last year’s Busan film festival, says the team aim to premiere the film in Singapore at the end of July ahead of an international film festival run. Talks are also currently underway to launch the film on a global streaming platform later this year. Khoo was also a showrunner on HBO Asia series anthologies Folklore (2018) and Food Lore (2019), as well as the second season of Folklore in 2021. 

Borgia has producing credits including Stranger Eyes, Chia Chee Sum’s Oasis Of Now, which premiered in Busan New Currents last year, K. Rajagopal’s A Yellow Bird and Boo Junfeng’s Sandcastle and Apprentice, with the latter three films all premiering in Cannes. Clover Films is a leading Southeast Asian distributor and has also produced more than 20 films including Khoo’s Ramen Teh, Royston Tan’s 12 Lotus and Jack Neo’s Money No Enough 3.