Badak

Aspiring hip-hop artist Mirah is an instant success at her first live performance. But her passion draws her away from her Deaf father, who needs her help to run their burger stall. Speech and sign language find their inner music in this feel-good family drama.

Looking up at the skyscrapers that surround her modest house in Kuala Lumpur, Mirah dreams. She wants to become a rap artist – a desire that becomes destiny after she sets the floor on fire at her first public appearance. Mirah’s hip-hop stardom seems foreordained, much to the dismay of her Deaf father Salihin, who is convinced that music is taking his daughter away from him, just as it estranged him from his singer father.

In Badak, Singaporean filmmaker M. Raihan Halim (La Luna, Closing Film, IFFR 2024) presents a bittersweet family drama about listening to and with one’s heart. The disarming intergenerational dynamic between the chirpy Mirah, her reticent single dad and her cranky grandfather develops through scenes chiefly in sign language. In the process, Halim’s film shows how little spoken language matters when it comes to (mis)reading and (mis)understanding people. 

Powered by propulsive hip-hop numbers, endearing lead performances and an unwavering sense of humour, Badak mixes archetypes and minute inventions with ease, offering a work that feels both comfortingly familiar and bracingly fresh.  

– Srikanth Srinivasan

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