For Chong, who grew up in Penang, the film is a tribute to his Malaysian roots. “It’s much deeper than just fashion,” he said on Variety. “Especially when we have Michelle and Sean, I didn’t want to restrict them with a fashion film. The whole idea is to tell a story of my hometown – the culture, the emotion.”
Chong said in another publication, American fashion magazine W Magazine: “Penang has this quiet theatricality: its heritage architecture, its faded grandeur, the sense of history layered into every street.
“It felt like the perfect stage for Sandiwara, which translates to drama in Malay. At the end of the shoot, Penang had become our sixth character in the film.”
The director’s original concept for the short – created in collaboration with Self-Portrait’s artist residency programme, an initiative that brings together artists from different disciplines to create without boundaries – was far more outlandish. It followed a “caper” that saw Yeoh “running from some gangsters”, he told Variety. “It was ridiculous, it was like exactly what someone from the outside would be writing from their couch in West Hollywood.”
However, spending time in Penang reshaped his vision. “It was immediately apparent that this is one of the major foodie destinations in the world,” Baker said, adding how he found the city to be “very physically different than what I imagined”.
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