The story: A drag queen (Richie Koh) estranged from his conservative family returns home to care for his widowed mother (Hong Huifang), who has early-onset dementia. She mistakes him for her long-lost daughter, a charade he keeps up as they grow closer.
Local film-maker Ong Kuo Sin first met drag performer Christopher Lim, alias Sammi Zhen, while researching for his musical comedy Number 1 (2020).
He has crafted from Lim's life story a tender, humane portrait. And central to A Good Child is the transformative performance of MediaCorp artiste Koh (Your World In Mine, 2022), who deservedly has a Golden Horse Award nomination for his feature lead debut.
Jia Hao is Lim's alter ego. He is all campy insolence, his sass-itude a raised middle finger at a society that rejects him, and Koh gets his anger, insecurity and pain: He was a disgrace to his own father.
The prevailing trans- and homophobia has damaged everyone around him. Charlie Goh is raw resentment as the dutiful elder son, and Cheryl Chou is the fiancee trapped along with him by the burden of eldercare and the stigma of "Ah Gua's brother".
The cast is impeccable. Veteran actress Hong has the single one-dimensional role as the addled mother: The trajectory towards predictable family healing is not without melodrama.
But there is generosity and heart, and such a sensitive queer-positive work is a rarity in Singapore cinema. Writer-director Ong is full of affection for the characters, not only Jia Hao in his search for belonging and identity.
"Just the way you are," says Johnny Lu as his devoted partner, the Taiwanese-American actor, too, quite wonderful. "You're okay."
More than okay, really, in a movie that pleads acceptance of others and self-love.
Hot take: Richie Koh is a revelation.
The story: Over one frenetic day and night in 1996 England, reform school teacher Steve (Cillian Murphy) grapples with professional crises and personal demons.
"Very, very tired" is Steve's answer, when a visiting documentary crew asks what three words describe him.
It is no surprise. Stanton Wood in the British indie Steve is a boarding facility for violent out-of-control teen boys, where Murphy's eponymous administrator has to stop the boys from killing one another, rally his equally exhausted staff and process the devastating news that the trustees are closing the school.
This "expensive dumping ground for society's waste product" is his calling.
Steve's only relief during the upsetting 24 hours is to wash down copious oxycodone pills with alcohol while nobody is looking. He has substance use disorder.
Shy (Jay Lycurgo) is a student in his own spiralling despair, having been abandoned by his parents. He was the central character in English author Max Porter's 2023 novella Shy.
Porter has refocused his self-adaptation on Steve, and Murphy with those sunken cheeks is so very expressive at playing harried heroes: his morally tortured "father of the atomic bomb" in Oppenheimer (2023) won the Irish actor an Academy Award.
Belgian director Tim Mielants, Murphy's long-time collaborator from the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2013 to 2022) and the historical drama film Small Things Like These (2024), manifests Steve's nervous breakdown with a skittering fly-on-the-wall camera and jagged jump cuts.
However broad its examination of mental health, poverty, delinquency and underfunded institutions, the social issue piece is affecting for this decent man's refusal to give up the troubled youths who need him.
Hot take: As fun as detention, but this classroom drama pays worthy tribute to the dedication of educators.