Ah Girl, the debut feature from Singaporean director Ang Geck Geck Priscilla, opens in cinemas islandwide on Thursday, 19 November 2026. It follows a seven-year-old growing up in a 1994 HDB flat while her parents’ marriage falls apart. Three days after it opens, on 22 November, the film learns in Taipei whether its three Golden Horse Award nominations become trophies, so audiences here get to see it before Asia’s biggest Chinese-language film awards deliver their verdict.
The film had its gala homecoming at Capitol Theatre with First Lady Ms Jane Ittogi as Guest-of-Honour. Before that, it spent a year on the festival circuit, screening in Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Toronto, Bangkok and more. Its most recent win came at home: the top prize, Best Asian Feature Film, at the 37th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) Silver Screen Awards on 31 October.
Bubblegum, Divorce and a Primary One Kid
The Chinese title, 泡泡糖女孩, means “Bubblegum Girl,” and Ang chose it on purpose. That is a lot of meaning for a sweet most of us were scolded for sticking under desks!
The story is set in 1994. Ah Girl is a precocious seven-year-old starting primary school. Since her parents separated, she has lived in a small flat with her boyish five-year-old sister Ah Tian, a quiet Dad who works night shifts, and an irritable Grandmother who looks after the kids. Mum appears on weekends and spoils them with food and toys.
One night, Mum asks Ah Girl to choose to live with her. That choice would mean leaving her father and sister once Mum gets a new house. Over the following year the adults start new relationships, money gets tight, and Ah Girl slowly realises her family isn’t like the ones her classmates have.
The film is shot in 4:3, the boxy frame of 1990s television. Stefan Borsos, a programmer at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), praised “the director’s intelligence of using the camera format, height etc to experience the world from the (limited) children’s perspective.” So the period detail does more than set the mood. It keeps the camera at a child’s eye level, where the adults’ decisions are only half visible.
Why the HDB Setting Hits Home
For Singaporean audiences, much of the story takes place in an HDB flat, the public housing most families here start out in. Young viewers raised in HDB flats and grandma-run households will recognise the setting immediately, because the film is about the kind of home they grew up in.
“Everyone was once a child, and everyone has a story of family to tell. This is mine,” says Ang. She adds that in Rotterdam, Hong Kong and Toronto, people came up to her after screenings to talk about their own childhoods and describe a sense of healing and reconciliation. A story built from Singapore specifics connected with audiences abroad, which is the strongest sign so far that it will land here too.
The Seven-Year-Old at the Centre
Newcomer Ong Xuan Jing plays Ah Girl, and she was seven when the film was shot. Sydney Wong plays her sister Ah Tian. Ang paired her shortlist off to find the strongest sister chemistry.
Before filming, the children spent about three months in workshops and one-to-one outings with Ang. She used games to draw out emotion instead of asking them to “act.” Her rule on set was that the children’s welfare came before the film. Shooting ran for 28 days in June 2024, during the school holidays, and one haircut scene is real. It was done in one take, and Ong had to field comments from classmates about it after she went back to school.
The adult cast is just as interesting. Mediacorp artistes Carrie Wong and James Seah take their first leading film roles here. Theatre actress Doreen Toh and Benjamin Heng complete the family.
The Wins That Matter Most
The film has collected plenty of awards, but three stand out. The SGIFF win matters because it is the festival’s top prize, awarded at home. Ong’s acting prizes matter because they went to a child performer: the Firebird Award for Best Actress in the Young Cinema Competition at the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival, and a shared Best Actress award at the 9th Malaysia International Film Festival (MIFFest). The third is the Youth Jury Award from IFFR, where the film had its world premiere.
Elsewhere, the Bangkok International Film Festival gave it Best ASEAN Film and the New Voices Award, while MIFFest added the New Hope award from the Malaysia Golden Global Awards. The team behind it says the film holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
At the 63rd Golden Horse Awards, Ang is nominated for Best New Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and Ong is nominated for Best New Performer. In the director category, Ang is up against established names including Shu Qi.
Over Ten Years in the Making
The character first appeared in Broken Crayon, Ang’s 2013 final-year project at NTU’s School of Art, Design and Media, which won Best Short Film at the Singapore Short Film Festival that year. Two more shorts about the same girl followed in 2014 before the feature script began. “The script grew together with me,” Ang says, explaining that it changed from something very dark into something more hopeful.
She isn’t finished with Ah Girl either. Ang plans two more films that follow the character as a teenager and then as an adult, which makes this a story worth catching from the very beginning.
Before You Head to the Cinema
Shaw Organisation is distributing the film. Christopher Shaw, its Director for Film Acquisition and Distribution, calls it “surely one of the finest films in world cinema this year.”
If you want to eat your way into the 90s, bakery Nesuto has created a limited-edition Ah Girl Pandan Jagung Cake inspired by two neighbourhood favourites, kueh jagung (a corn cake) and pandan kaya cake.
🗓️ Date: From Thursday, 19 November 2026
📍 Location: Cinemas islandwide
🎬 Preview screening: 14 November 2026, Shaw Theatres Lido
🔞 Rating: PG13 (Some coarse language and sexual references)
🗣️ Language: Mandarin, English and Hokkien
⏱️ Running time: 99 minutes
🏆 Golden Horse Awards: Winners announced in Taipei on 22 November 2026
🍰 Tie-in: Ah Girl Pandan Jagung Cake at Nesuto outlets and online, until December 2026
This is a Singapore film about a household many of us lived in, made with care by a director who has spent over a decade with this character, and it reaches cinemas here before the Golden Horse winners are named. Watch the official Ah Girl trailer, follow @ahgirlfilm on Instagram for screening updates and behind-the-scenes trivia, and note that the film opens on 19 November, with ticketing details to be announced later. Bring your parents too, since they may recognise more of it than you will!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of Aggregate Films and Kusu Films.
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