We Are All Strangers (我们不是陌生人), the last film in Anthony Chen’s Growing Up trilogy, has seven nominations at the 63rd Golden Horse Awards, announced in Taipei on 1 October 2026. Better news for anyone in Singapore who hasn’t caught it yet: the film’s team says it’s still screening at Golden Village and Shaw cinemas.
It’s also Singapore’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards, which makes this the home-grown title to follow through awards season. The Taipei ceremony falls on Sunday, 22 November 2026, so there’s time to watch it and pick a side before the envelopes open!
7 Nods, and 3 to Watch
The list covers a lot of ground. We Are All Strangers is up for Best Narrative Feature Film and Best Director for Chen, with acting nods for Yeo Yann Yann (Best Leading Actress) and Andi Lim WeiWen (Best Supporting Actor). Behind the camera, Irin Lee and Red Ngoh are nominated for Best Makeup & Costume Design, Kin Leonn and Thomas Foguenne for Best Original Film Score, and Chen Ho-ping for Best Editing.
Three of those deserve the closest eye. Best Narrative Feature Film is the category that decides how the night gets remembered, Lim’s nod comes for his first feature film, and the score is the easiest to judge for yourself because the soundtrack has been on major streaming platforms since 7 August. If you only have room to care about one, make it Yeo’s.
3 for 3, and a First-Timer
Yeo has now been recognised by the Golden Horse Awards for every Growing Up film, which is three for three! She won Best Supporting Actress for Ilo Ilo at the 50th edition in 2013, when the film took four awards including Best Feature Film. Six years later she won Best Leading Actress for Wet Season at the 56th edition.
The detail that makes the run more impressive is that she never repeated herself, because each film is a standalone story with a new role. “Yann Yann has given these films three entirely different women, each brought to life with incredible depth,” Chen said of the nomination. This time she’s Lee Bee Hwa, a vivacious outsider who walks into a hawker’s life and unsettles his whole household.
Bee Hwa has a second prize in play too. Yeo is nominated for Best Performance at the 19th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), which holds its ceremony on 30 October 2026 at The Star Gold Coast in Australia.
Opposite her is Andi Lim WeiWen, a familiar face on Singapore television who plays Boon Kiat, a hawker (a cooked-food stallholder) and a father who struggles to say what he feels. We Are All Strangers is his feature film debut, and he sounds as surprised as anyone: “I never imagined my first feature would lead to a Golden Horse nomination.”
A Trilogy Nobody Planned
Chen says he never consciously set out to make three films. In 2012 his team auditioned more than 8,000 children for Ilo Ilo and found Koh Jia Ler, an 11-year-old with no acting experience. That one casting decision turned into what the director calls a 13-year journey with Koh and Yeo.
The third film grew out of worry. Koh had turned 17 and quit school after Wet Season wrapped, and Chen writes in his director’s note that he worried about the teenager being “thrust into the brutality of the adult world”. So Koh now plays Junyang, a 21-year-old whose relationship with girlfriend Lydia (Regene Lim) takes a life-altering turn while his father falls for someone new.
The titles tell you where it lands. In English the film is We Are All Strangers, while the Mandarin title, 我们不是陌生人, translates as We Are Not Strangers, and the contradiction is deliberate.
Making Ordinary Singapore Look Beautiful
The film lives in hawker stalls, neighbourhood coffee shops (kopitiams), and HDB homes, Singapore’s public housing. It was built around a question Chen put to himself: “Why can’t the working class experience love and hope and romance?” His brief to the crew matched it: “How do we make ordinary life in Singapore beautiful?”
Shooting there meant relying on residents who opened their homes to the production around the clock. “It’s so easy to say no,” Chen said, and that small kindness between strangers happens to be the film’s plot in miniature.
The score got the same care. Singaporean ambient musician Kin Leonn and Belgian-born, Taiwan-based composer Thomas Foguenne, whose credits include Stranger Eyes, started work before filming began and kept going through post-production. Their 16-track album is mostly instrumental, with singer-songwriter Charlie Lim on the end title track.
“If this film were set in New York, you could imagine a bus ride set to jazz,” Chen said, before describing his search for a sound that sets the modern against the traditional. Even his sound supervisor treated the shoot as a time capsule and recorded the ambient sound of each location with that in mind.
Taipei First, Then the Oscars
Winners are announced at the Taipei Music Center on 22 November, with the red carpet from 5pm and the ceremony from 6.30pm (Taipei time, GMT+8). Before that, the film is slated to open in Malaysia on 22 October 2026 and Hong Kong on 12 November 2026, with Taiwan to follow. It screens at the Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain in late October.
The Oscars campaign is a longer road. A selection committee drawn from the Singapore Film Commission Advisory Committee picked the film as the national entry in September, the third Chen film chosen after Ilo Ilo and Wet Season, and an entry is a submission, with any nomination yet to be earned. It arrives with a competition premiere at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, the opening slot at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and a Special Mention at the Far East Film Festival in Udine behind it.
🗓️ Date: Sunday, 22 November 2026 (63rd Golden Horse Awards ceremony)
⏰ Time: Red carpet from 5pm, ceremony from 6.30pm (Taipei time, GMT+8)
📍 Location: Taipei Music Center, Taipei
🎬 In cinemas: Golden Village and Shaw in Singapore, according to the film’s team, with Malaysia slated for 22 October 2026 and Hong Kong for 12 November 2026
Look up Golden Village and Shaw showtimes while the film is on the big screen. Chen has said “nothing beats having Singapore audiences discover a film that was made for and about them”, and a ticket this month is the easiest way to have a view of your own by 22 November. Go and see what Taipei’s voters saw!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of Giraffe Pictures.
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