Singapore’s First Wuxia Film ‘The House on the Moon’ Unveils Clip Ahead of Locarno Competition Bow: Director Nelson Yeo ‘Decided to Fully Embrace Genre’ (EXCLUSIVE)
What's happening
Singapore's first wuxia feature film, 'The House on the Moon,' is unveiling a clip ahead of its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. Director Nelson Yeo has fully embraced the martial arts genre for what marks a significant gap-filler in Singaporean cinema history.
Who's involved
Director Nelson Yeo is spearheading the project, bringing the wuxia genre to Singapore's feature film landscape for the first time. The film is headed to the Locarno International Film Festival, a major annual event held in Switzerland that screens competitive and non-competitive sections.
Why it matters
This marks Singapore's first wuxia feature despite the genre's popularity in local television during the late 1980s and early 1990s, closing a notable gap in the nation's film output. The Locarno premiere positions the film on an international stage, potentially establishing a new direction for Singaporean genre cinema and reviving interest in a beloved domestic tradition.
The story
Singapore's cinema has never produced a wuxia feature film, despite the martial arts genre's deep roots in the country's television history. That drought ends with 'The House on the Moon,' directed by Nelson Yeo, which is set to premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival ahead of wider release. The film's unveiling of a new clip marks an official milestone in what Yeo describes as a deliberate creative choice to fully embrace the wuxia form.
The wuxia tradition runs deep in Singapore's cultural memory. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the genre flourished on local television, with a wave of wuxia serials that featured prominent actors including Li Nanxing and Zhu Ming. These shows captivated audiences and established the genre as a recognizable fixture of Singaporean entertainment. Yet despite this television legacy, no feature-length wuxia film emerged from the nation's cinema industry—until now.
Director Nelson Yeo's decision to create 'The House on the Moon' as Singapore's first wuxia feature represents a conscious effort to revive and elevate the form. According to Variety, Yeo has made the deliberate choice to fully embrace the genre conventions and storytelling traditions that define wuxia cinema. The film takes its setting to the moon, suggesting an ambitious scope that blends the classic martial arts framework with speculative or fantastical elements.
The Locarno International Film Festival, founded in 1946 and held annually in Switzerland, provides an internationally prestigious platform for the film's debut. The festival screens narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and avant-garde works across competitive and non-competitive sections, with its famous Piazza Grande venue hosting screenings for up to 8,000 spectators in an open-air setting. The selection of 'The House on the Moon' for competition reflects the festival's interest in distinctive national cinema and genre innovation.
Yeo's project arrives at a moment when wuxia continues to capture global audiences through cinema and streaming platforms, yet Singapore's own contribution to the form has remained absent from its feature film canon. The release of 'The House on the Moon' offers an opportunity to reconnect Singaporean audiences with a genre that shaped their entertainment landscape decades ago, while introducing the wuxia tradition to international viewers through a distinctly Singaporean lens.