Amoeba’s title is one of the strangest choices in local cinema, considering an ‘amoeba’ doesn’t immediately bring to mind Singapore, teenage girls, or anything local. But perhaps that’s exactly the point. “Most of us know amoebas from biology lessons, and it’s kind of weird, kind of gross,” says filmmaker Tan Siyou. “It’s not a fluffy cloud or Hello Kitty, and I deliberately chose it as a metaphor because it isn’t very approachable, and really captured my feelings growing up as a teenager in Singapore being this strange amorphous blob figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be.”
And in all honesty, there was never any other option for Tan, to the extent she thinks the obsession made her a little delusional. And despite constant pushback from various people in her life, she stood by it, and the idea made its way into the film’s visual identity. “When I started making this film, there were just four elements I had in mind: the title, a ghost, a girls’ school, and a gang,” says Tan. “I’m glad to say they all made it in.”
Based in New York, Tan has slowly been building up a portfolio for herself over the years with both commercial work and short films, before finally releasing Amoeba as her debut feature. The film, about a group of four students forming a gang to resist authoritarian rules at their all-girls school, premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, before touring the international festival circuit, including a triumphant sold-out Asian premiere at the 36th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) in December. Now, Tan has returned to Singapore for a short homecoming as Amoeba receives a wider release from Anticipate Pictures here, and reflects on the film’s origins, her upbringing in Singapore, and the persistence of teenage angst on our sunny island.
When you look at the pristine white uniforms the leads of Amoeba don, most Singaporeans would immediately think of a certain girls school director Tan has taken inspiration from. “Of course, I didn’t set out to make a film about a specific school,” says Tan, as she continues to keep the identity of her ‘Confucian’, all girls alma mater under wraps and declines to formally confirm it. “If you recognise it in the film, then it’s more of an Easter egg for those who know. But really, this is not a film that’s passing commentary on that particular school, but the Singapore education system, and how there are often such strict rules, and strict rules and immense academic pressure.”
Amoeba then goes beyond a film about memory, but a quintessentially reflective Singaporean film that questions and considers ideas of rewarding obedience and discipline, both in school and the greater systems of power. Of course, the film itself was highly inspired by her own experiences back in secondary school, and the trials and tribulations faced along the way. “Back in Sec 1, I suddenly found myself very constrained by the stuffiness of the school and its rules, because there were so many that I didn’t agree with or just didn’t make sense to me,” says Tan, who recalls rules as wild as how teachers would place a 50 cent coin against student watches to measure if it was too big, or police the colour of students’ bras against their white uniform.
“A lot of friends told me to just ‘忍’ – to endure; why make noise and make life so difficult? I tried that for a while, but it was really such an isolating experience where I felt like the only one who couldn’t stand what was going on and found it all so absurd,” she continues. “When I went up to upper sec, I got placed in a class of ‘losers’, the sporty class with terrible grades where some teachers would literally tell us we would grow up to be burdens on society. But it was there that I found my people, and met three other ‘misfits’ who became my best friends.”
Tan remembers the mischief she and her ‘gang’ would get up to in class, and felt an incredible sense of togetherness that got her through secondary school. “So my first real heartbreak happened after graduation, where we all went to different schools. We still stayed in touch, and still are, but something shifted after no longer being together 24/7,” says Tan. “The film was originally going to be a love letter to that, and started off very autobiographical and personal.”
But something about just didn’t feel right for Tan, and during the pandemic, Tan took the time to reflect, and situate the story within the context of the larger world and systems instead, rewriting it to give it more distance and telling a different story instead. “I started to think about our definitions of success, where we were brought up on this sleepy fishing village turned bustling metropolis story. Somehow along the way, each successive generation of children became imbued with the idea that your path to success was through education and good grades, where you are already aiming for this before your brain even fully develops and you’re just aiming to get the highest marks possible to reach the most ‘renowned’ schools. That was the story I wanted to tell, to examine these forces and system that shaped young Singaporeans, and question which decisions were really made by us, or by our parents.”
As a teenager, Tan strongly resisted this narrative, deliberately doing the bare minimum to get by and pass her exams, and run away to do her own thing. Looking back, Tan thought about how society itself seemed to forget about the importance of intimacy and friendship, when so much of it revolved around ranking and competition. “There is so much classification going on all the time, like how you’re separated by ability level to school, to class, and the people you meet and are surrounded by are really pre-determined for you based on your intelligence, and you really wonder how much absolute choice you actually have in anything at all,” says Tan.
