The Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) will wrap up its 37th anniversary on November 1 with Eugene Kotlyarenko’s streaming crime drama “Vintage Violence,” starring Cole Sprouse and Mizuhara Kiko.
The screening is reminiscent of an independent festival closeout that SGIFF last staged in 2014.
The film premiered in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto Film Festival and will have its Asian premiere at Singapore’s Capitol Theatre. Kotlyarenko, Sprouse and Mizuhara will participate.
“After more than a decade, we are excited to bring back the festival closeout as a moment for audiences to come together for one last film on the big screen,” said SGIFF executive director Jeremy Chua. “’Vintage Violence’ felt like the right film to close this edition—rebellious, contemporary, and deeply attuned to the ways technology is changing the way we see, share, and experience the world around us.”
In the film, a livestreamer named Carter uncovers a pair of 19th-century Levi’s while exploring an abandoned Colorado mine. Watching his Japan-based channel, Izumi tells him the jeans will make a fortune in the Tokyo denim market. The plan unravels when Izumi’s indebted boyfriend attracts Edoga, a jeans-obsessed underworld figure, and an exiled yakuza whose cybernetic middle finger spews drug mist arrives to settle scores with Edoga. The film relies on split screens to show text threads, streams and their live chats.
Born in Odessa, Kotlyarenko moved to New York and enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied film, philosophy and literature. He previously directed “Wobble Palace” (2018) and “Spree” (2020), which also focused on online culture.
The director and both leads will discuss Kotlyarenko’s interest in cinema culture, how the film was made, and how Sprouse and Mizuhara have approached on-screen acting throughout their careers in a “Conversation” session at the National Museum of Singapore on October 31.
Other sessions in the series include Aamir Khan, Peter Chan and Shim Eun-kyung on October 22, Koreeda Hirokazu on October 24, and Anthony Wong on October 29.
SGIFF opens on October 21 with Hur Jin-ho’s “The Assassin(s),” which South Korea’s conservative People Power Party retained as the festival’s opening film due to its writing on behalf of all 109 members of parliament and allegations that it distorted history.
The festival is supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).