Dreaming and Dying
Nelson Yeo’s beautifully restrained debut feature portrays a complex love triangle of fantasy and desire between three old friends unexpectedly reunited in their middle age. Unfolding through bold dreamy poetics, a journey that begins in the real gently blooms into a moving and unexpected reflection on the porous boundaries between worlds; touching on issues of ageing, ecological collapse, mature sexuality, and mythology.
Programmer’s Note
Deeply personal and pleasurably unresolved, Dreaming and Dying feels guided by an intuitive rhythm. Along its splintering storyline, it travels the depth of human emotions with equal deference and humour. Moving performances, elusive identities and understated supernatural occurrences seem animated by actively participating scenery. The film demonstrates a fresh ability to combine delicate cinematography with a commitment to dynamic form and narrative. A past lover is also a merman, one’s desire is also that of a book character. This fluidity, mirrored in the association of water and memory, endures in the film’s lingering sense of openness. Haunting regrets, the repressed or painful lure of alternate lives, and the finitude of death are convincingly balanced with the freeing potency of dreams. (Ilinca Vânău)
Director Biography
Nelson Yeo graduated with a BFA in Digital Filmmaking from Nanyang Technological University in 2011. He participated in Berlinale Talents Tokyo (2014), BiFan Fantastic Film School (2015) and Locarno Filmmakers Academy (2018). His short films have screened widely at international film festivals including Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Cairo International Film Festival and Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. His films have won prestigious awards at Golden Ger International Film Festival, the Bangkok ASEAN Film Festival, Seashorts Film Festival and Ribalta Experimental Film Festival. His first feature film, Dreaming & Dying, premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2023, Concorso Cineasti del presente section.
Director Filmography
Dreaming and Dying (2023), Plastic Sonata (2022), Dreaming (2021), Here is Not There (2019), Mary, Mary, So Contrary (2019), Five Trees (2017), Mountain of Knives (2015), The Story I Forgot to Tell (2013), Seeya in Elektrik Dreamz (2011), Nobody’s Home (2010)