Covid-19 intermission spurs Singapore director Anthony Chen’s revenge directing

SINGAPORE – An identity crisis spurred a sudden spike in productivity for home-grown film-maker Anthony Chen.

In 2021, he had prepared himself to direct Drift, the adaptation of Alexander Maksik’s 2013 novel, A Marker To Measure Drift. But the Covid-19 pandemic put the production on hold for months.

London – where he was based – was in lockdown, leaving him stuck at home.

He recalls: “I was a house husband. I did the washing and the cooking and looked after our son, who was 18 months old at the time. During the lockdowns, my wife worked in the home office. She had a day job, with meetings and everything. She clocked in, she clocked out.”

His wife Rachel Yan is a risk analyst.

Chen, 39, was speaking with The Straits Times at a press event for his new film, The Breaking Ice, at the Sands Theatre at Marina Bay Sands on Monday. It opens in Singapore cinemas on Thursday. 

“I lost my identity as a film-maker. I was a man. I was a father. I was a husband. But I wasn’t a film-maker,” says Chen, who moved to Hong Kong with his family in 2022.

That period of crisis was also the time when he read news reports about young people in Britain, United States and China who were feeling unprecedented levels of frustration, loneliness and alienation. The result was a screenplay about three young people who over the span of four days explore their feelings for one another and life in general.

The Breaking Ice stars Chinese actors Zhou Dongyu (Better Days, 2019), Liu Haoran (Detective Chinatown, 2015) and Qu Chuxiao (The Wandering Earth, 2019) as the three people seeking answers in the snow-covered city of Yanji, one of the coldest places in China.

SINGAPORE – An identity crisis spurred a sudden spike in productivity for home-grown film-maker Anthony Chen.

In 2021, he had prepared himself to direct Drift, the adaptation of Alexander Maksik’s 2013 novel, A Marker To Measure Drift. But the Covid-19 pandemic put the production on hold for months.

London – where he was based – was in lockdown, leaving him stuck at home.

He recalls: “I was a house husband. I did the washing and the cooking and looked after our son, who was 18 months old at the time. During the lockdowns, my wife worked in the home office. She had a day job, with meetings and everything. She clocked in, she clocked out.”

His wife Rachel Yan is a risk analyst.

Chen, 39, was speaking with The Straits Times at a press event for his new film, The Breaking Ice, at the Sands Theatre at Marina Bay Sands on Monday. It opens in Singapore cinemas on Thursday. 

“I lost my identity as a film-maker. I was a man. I was a father. I was a husband. But I wasn’t a film-maker,” says Chen, who moved to Hong Kong with his family in 2022.

That period of crisis was also the time when he read news reports about young people in Britain, United States and China who were feeling unprecedented levels of frustration, loneliness and alienation. The result was a screenplay about three young people who over the span of four days explore their feelings for one another and life in general.

The Breaking Ice stars Chinese actors Zhou Dongyu (Better Days, 2019), Liu Haoran (Detective Chinatown, 2015) and Qu Chuxiao (The Wandering Earth, 2019) as the three people seeking answers in the snow-covered city of Yanji, one of the coldest places in China.