Lee Kang-sheng Features in U.S. Trailer for Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes

      After gaining attention with his Golden Leopard-winning film A Land Imagined, Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua returned to the festival circuit last autumn with his Venice premiere Stranger Eyes. This intriguing drama, featuring Lee Kang-sheng, a regular collaborator of Tsai Ming-liang, is set to be released on August 29 by Film Movement, and the new trailer has been unveiled.

      Here’s the synopsis: “Following months of a futile police investigation into their daughter's disappearance, a young, estranged couple, Junyang and Peiying, start to realize they are being secretly filmed when they begin to receive mysterious packages at their home containing DVDs of their daily activities. The footage is unsettling not only because of the invasion of their privacy but also for the intimate revelations about Junyang and Peiying's relationship. Believing that their stalker may be involved in their daughter's disappearance, the couple embarks on a desperate quest to find him, only to discover that the truth about his identity is more complex than it appears.”

      Leonardo Goi noted in his Venice review, “In a film deeply engaged with our contemporary media landscape––the ways we create and consume images of one another––Lee enters Stranger Eyes as a sort of anomaly. There is a striking difference between the clinical gaze of CCTV cameras and the actor’s own, reflecting the contrast between how surveillance apparatuses capture reality and how Lee’s Wu interprets it. I do not intend to diminish the performances of Wu and Panna. The former, in particular, conveys a frenzied angst, and his evolution from being the object of Wu’s obsession to becoming a voyeur in his own right is largely effective. However, Stranger Eyes truly belongs to Lee. Whether or not Yeo envisioned the role with him in mind, I can't think of a more fitting actor to embody the divide that drives the film: between different perspectives, between age-old fears and the cutting-edge technology used to reveal them.”

      Watch the trailer below.