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Wang (Liu Xiaoyi), a lonely labourer from China, is searching for his missing co-worker when he vanishes and becomes the subject of a prolonged police investigation himself. Director Yeo Siew Hua imbues his stylish neo noir with a moody, oneiric quality characterised by unmarked flashbacks, atmospheric lighting and overlapping storylines. The film is largely populated by non-professional actors and musicians from Singapore’s migrant worker community and is set in a desolate land reclamation zone where Cambodian gravel and Malaysian sand rattle out of dusty chutes to build docklands expanding the city-state’s economic and geographic footprint. Police investigator Lok (Peter Yu) encounters resistance from the company bosses who lock away their labourers’ passports “for safekeeping”. A Land Imagined won the top prize at the 2018 Locarno Film Festival, for its compelling blend of film noir and social realism which captures the energy of the city at night, aglow with coloured lights, yet it also pulls the stratification of Singaporean society into focus foregrounding the plight of foreign workers struggling with discrimination, debt and dangerous working conditions. JS

Ages 15+ | Nudity, adult themes