AMOEBA: REVIEWS BY YIFM

18 March 2026

Film: AMOEBA (dir. Siyou Tan, 2025) screening as part of the 10th EAFFI 2026

REVIEWS BY THE Young Irish Critics

The Young Irish Critics initiative aims to create a more informal education space for young people to engage with international and youth-authored/classic and independent cinema (film and animation). With thanks to the Young Irish Critics for collaborating with us again in 2026!

REVIEW BY WILLIAM O’KEEFE

Amoeba, follows Choo who has moved to a new school, she sees ghosts at night in her room, a concept beyond her understanding and control. Her day life isn’t much better, a wall literally divides the women into the family kitchen and her father into the living room. Despite Singapore being a melting pot of cultures and ideas, it is difficult for her to find expression in an environment where self-oppression against women exists. In an act of defiance, Choo forms a gang with her new friends, even receiving advice from a family member with criminal ties. Fortunately, their schemes don’t extend to illegal activities.

Although I have a surface level understanding of Singapore’s history, what I appreciate about Siyou Tan’s debut feature, Amoeba is the exploration of cultural dysphoria. Constantly switching from Chinese to English, the gang worries if they’ll end up in the same college, memorising myths and legends that they don’t even believe embody their culture. The discovery of a shrine in a cave, unexposed to the public, becomes a way of finding meaning in their country’s history.

The lead Ranice Tay convincingly conveys her frustration for the most part, with the other girls being perfectly cast and distinct. The mix of an early 2000s aesthetics, with frequent camcorder footage and a pink bubble gun, fortunately don’t equate the film to a pastiche. The main style is restrained, echoing the suppression these characters are facing. The film, although familiar in terms of setup, is effective in making the audience infer meaning from the unfolding events, similar to how the characters are trying to themselves.

REVIEW BY KHUSHI JAIN

An amoeba is a single-celled organism without a definition. Definition-less amoebas are what the protagonists of Singaporean director Tan Siyou’s debut feature aspire to be. And this being is no less than a transgression in the conformist and capitalist Asian nation with the continent’s highest GDP per capita. 

Amoeba is about four disillusioned teenage girls (Ranice Tay, Nicole Lee, Lim Shi-an and Genevieve Tan) in the fictional, elite and ironically named Confucius Girls’ Secondary School, who react to the asphyxiating rules and regulations of the institution by forming a secret gang. This girl-gang is inspired by the gang culture of colonial Singapore and engages in all kinds of criminal activities, like chewing gum. 

While watching this film, I couldn’t help but think of Neo Sora’s 2024 Happyend, the near-future story of how a Tokyo school installing an invasive surveillance system changes everything for two best friends. Although Happyendis daring and brilliant in its own right, Amoeba manages to push the limits of what a school-set film is capable of achieving. It retains the innocence and flux of its young leading ladies while addressing issues pervading all of Singapore, including the conflict between the individual and society. In whites and pinks, cinematographer Neus Ollé captures the oppressive school infrastructure, creating a striking contrast between development and prohibition, and editor Félix Rehm distils the essence of teenage into a cinematic rhythm that works only because it is pure chaos.

Most memorably, in Amoeba, Tan revolutionises the director-actor relationship by giving control of the camera to her characters. The gang often use a camcorder to record videos of their activities. This kind of dismantling of the artist-muse contract is something I am seeing a lot of in the current cinematic landscape, especially by women short filmmakers. Amoeba is self-consciously aware of the hierarchies and power imbalances that the girls question and rebel against. By handing over the camera to them, Tan bestows them with creative potency and the freedom of identity.

In many ways Tan also gave me the independence, that I never had, within the margins of her world. Amoeba took me back to the similarly Foucauldian school that I attended in New Delhi. I watched the film on my laptop and realised that it might be one of those viewing experiences that is better on a small, personal screen, not only because is it more intimate but also because it effectively visualises a closed and restrictive society. That being said, I am fairly excited to see it on the big screen, if for nothing else than its pulsating electric soundtrack.