TED PEDAS AWARD, TRUST NO ONE

Stranger Eyes

YEO SIEW HUA
Singapore, Taiwan, France, USA, 2024
125 minutes, Color

Director Yeo Siew Hua's film presses a lot of hot buttons. At first, it seems to be a story about a young couple whose child has disappeared; then Stranger Eyes becomes a tense examination of the modern surveillance state. We meet grieving young parents—husband Junyang and wife Peiying—poring through home movies of happier times and looking for clues about how their daughter went missing. Soon after little Bo vanishes in a park while Junyang was distracted, DVDs appear at her parents' doorstep with video footage of the pair going about their days, some old, some frighteningly recent. When the police finally catch the man who is delivering the discs (thanks to public cameras), the case is still not resolved. And when we spend time with the apparent stalker, the mystery only deepens. Many scenes are shot at intrusive angles from security cameras, perfectly accenting Hua's theme.—Dave Nuttycombe

In Mandarin with English subtitles