The first part of Year Without a Summer is set largely in the moonlight. On the evening when the singer Azam returns to the village he was so eager to flee as a little boy, he goes fishing in a boat with his friend Ali and his friend’s wife Minah.
They bob around in a boat as they tell each other old myths. When Minah shows she can hold her breath for three minutes and Azam does the same later, the camera waits calmly with the others until the time has passed. But for Azam that starts to last a very long time.
Tiger-Award winner Tan Chui Mui (Love Conquers All, 2007) uses many long shots in a style that alternates between realistic and mystical. The second part of the film is a retrospective look at the childhood of the two friends. For Azam, that time was spent waiting to grow older. Patience and desire are the main themes in this cinema poem in which fantasy and reality, present and past, become intertwined.
Film details
- Country of production
- Malaysia
- Year
- 2010
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2011
- Length
- 90'
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
