Cover The team behind SeaShorts Film Festival 2025: (From left) Varten Tharumalingam, Eddy Tan, Goh Lee Kwang, Dain Said, Nandita Solomon and Carmen Hau (Photo: Fady Younis)
The team behind SeaShorts Film Festival 2025: (From left) Varten Tharumalingam, Eddy Tan, Goh Lee Kwang, Dain Said, Nandita Solomon and Carmen Hau (Photo: Fady Younis)
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Led by award-winning filmmaker and festival director, Dain Said, the team behind SeaShorts Film Festival 2025 expound on its ninth year celebrating the voices of filmmakers in the region
When Eddy Tan first walked into a shophouse above Lostgens in Kuala Lumpur as a film student in 2017, he discovered something unexpected: a room packed with curators, programmers and filmmakers from across Southeast Asia, all engaged in passionate conversation about a cinema that looked nothing like what he'd been taught. “It really opened my eyes,” he recalls. “I realised you can express Malaysian films or Southeast Asian films in very different ways.”
That modest gathering has evolved into the SeaShorts Film Festival, now marking its ninth year—a remarkable feat in an industry where 95 per cent of film festivals don’t survive their first edition. Founded by award-winning filmmaker Tan Chui Mui, SeaShorts has become the region’s only festival dedicated exclusively to Southeast Asian short films, creating what festival director Dain Said describes as essential infrastructure for emerging talent. “This is where the youth are, where the young hopefuls for the future of cinema gather to talk, to discuss, to engage,” the Interchange director explains.
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The festival's survival speaks to something deeper than programming excellence.
For Said and his team—including programme director Tan, festival producer Goh Lee Kwang, chairperson Elyna Shukri and festival advisor Nandita Solomon—SeaShorts represents a deliberate reclamation of regional voice. “The original intention of SeaShorts was to show the youth that attend the festival that the sky of our neighbouring countries in films looks just the same," Tan notes. "Seeing what your immediate neighbours are doing really encourages community and very close discussions.
“It creates a very special bond that we don't really see in the other typical festivals. When festivals typically have a parameter of either a global programming or just a local national programming, and when we set ourselves in the parameters of a region, it creates this very interesting space.”
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This isn't merely aesthetic preference. Film education across Southeast Asia, Tan observes, has long embedded Western conventions into syllabi, creating an assumption that film language works only one way. The SeaShorts Film Festival offers what he carefully terms not a counter-narrative, but an alternative—one that encourages filmmakers to align their work with their own sense of identity. As Tan puts it, “There's really not a need to ‘Westernise’ all our films to make them more accessible.”
The festival's recent partnership with Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival in Indonesia marks a significant evolution. Elyna Shukri, who previously worked with film festivals in San Francisco, found the Jogjakarta experience transformative precisely because it operated without what she calls "the white lens". For a festival serving a region of over 700 million people, this matters profoundly.
Nandita, the festival's advisor, frames it historically: "In Southeast Asia, we have some different historical trajectories from colonialism. But if you go back a few hundred years or a thousand years even beyond colonialism, we were actually very interconnected between India, China and the rest of Southeast Asia. Colonialism separated us. Now in this 21st century, communities of filmmakers are trying to re-connect themselves. We're finding we have common languages, common experiences."
“So in that same way, culturally, linguistically, religiously, there are overlaps and contradictions, conflicts and negotiations. There’s a lot of learning and sharing that can happen. It's very, very rich and that's what makes it so exciting,” she adds.
Short films, unburdened by distribution models and commercial expectations, provide the perfect medium for this unadulterated democratic voice.
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Above For Said and his team—including programme director Tan, festival producer Goh Lee Kwang, publicity manager Carmen Hau, programme manager Varten Tharumalingam and advisor Nandita Solomon—SeaShorts represents a deliberate reclamation of regional voices
For Said and his team—including programme director Tan, festival producer Goh Lee Kwang, publicity manager Carmen Hau, programme manager Varten Tharumalingam and advisor Nandita Solomon—SeaShorts represents a deliberate reclamation of regional voices
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Festival producer Goh describes SeaShorts’ evolution over the past nine years, connecting Southeast Asian arts and culture through the lens of young creatives making use of available technology (from DV tapes and CDRs to increasingly sophisticated digital tools) and essentially a digital blank canvas afforded by the Internet. “We really saw that connection building amongst all these young filmmakers whether in Indonesia, Manila or Hanoi,” he says. “We learnt about how we share this common language and thread that connects the actors, the narratives, the scenes. That really helped us develop into what we are today.”
As the festival enters what Tan describes as its “coming-of-age phase”, the focus shifts beyond mere survival towards institutionalisation and succession planning.
Said’s long-term vision extends further still: connecting film to literature, art and life itself. But his immediate priority remains concrete—pushing younger Malaysian filmmakers towards their first features and securing the funding that might transform promising talent into sustainable careers.
For now, the team asks for something simpler: that young people mark their calendars and show up. The revolution, after all, requires witnesses.
Hit the link below to secure your festival passes for the SeaShorts Festival 2025 from October 16-19, 2025 at GSC Lalaport BBCC and YWCA Kuala Lumpur
Credits
Photography: Fady Younis
Creative Direction: Noemy Zainal
Location: Universiti Malaya Vice Chancellory building
Previously contributing to Esquire Malaysia, Expat Lifestyle and Newsweek, Tania oversees digital stories across Tatler’s key content pillars, also leading the Front & Female platform exploring issues and topics affecting women today.
