A Love Unknown

written, directed and edited by John Clang

2020 | 82 mins | English, Korean with English subtitles | DCP | 1:85:1 | Black & White, Color | 5.1

Two distant strangers, a woman in New York and her abandoned daughter she has never met in Singapore, try to break their endless fall into depression towards a better life. Elsewhere in a parallel universe, they live different fates.

TRAILER

FILM STILLS

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” - Albert Camus

I’m intrigued by the notion about the meaning of life. According to Aristotle, happiness is the central purpose of human life. When individuals fail to achieve this purpose of attaining happiness, what happens to their life?

A Love Unknown is the second film, after Their Remaining Journey, in a trilogy of films I’m making. Both films use non-actors for the aim to faithfully present the real essence of these individuals on the screen. I do not want them to act out their roles. I want them to give me everything they feel and have experienced, with no exaggeration or need for drama.

My intention is to simply extract their essence and preserve them in a film format.

I’m interested in blurring the line of documentary and fiction. By doing so, I believe it expands our comprehension of what’s being disguised from us in the emotion presented, allowing us to reflect it in our own lives or someone close to us. The cast I have carefully chosen have endured traumas of their own. In sharing their traumas with us, maybe it is naive for me to think that it can be a form of therapy for them. It did seem that way when we first started though it was never the purpose. After completion of the film, the burden of the reality presented in the film starts to take a toll on its cast. Time heals all wounds, but does it when the essence of the trauma is being forever preserved in the film?

- John Clang

REVIEWS

The Art(s) of Slow Cinema: Review by Dr Nadin Mai

SELECTED SCREENINGS

Official Selection - International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020
Opening Film - Singular Screens, Singapore International Festival of Arts 2020 - POSTPONED due to COVID-19
Official Selection - DMZ International Documentary Film Festival 2020
Official Selection - Singular Screens, Singapore International Festival of Arts 2021

NEWS

POSTER