PUBLISHED ONAugust 08, 2025 9:55 AMBYYeo Shu HuiLocal director M. Raihan Halim's family was at the premiere of SG60 anthology film Kopitiam Days on Aug 5 and when his short IZ-1 came on screen, his family immediately felt a sense of familiarity.
"My family had no idea what the film is about. My grandma and mum couldn't make it to the premiere, but my sisters, brothers-in-law and niece were there, and they were like, 'Oh, that's nenek (Malay for grandmother).' They get it," the 43-year-old told AsiaOne in an interview yesterday (Aug 7).
Kopitiam Days, which is supported by Infocomm Media Development Authority and Singapore Film Commission, is an anthology of six shorts which features Singapore in the past, present and future. Each of the stories is independent, but the kopitiam Heap Seng Leong is a familiar place in all the characters' lives.
The film is produced by local director Eric Khoo, who serves as the film's creative director and executive producer, and Lim Teck, managing director of Clover Films.
Raihan's short IZ-1 — affectionately called Izwan by the crew — tells the story of an elderly woman (Zaliha Hamid) navigating life and relationship with her daughter Hannah (Siti Khalijah) in 2035.
The latter buys an android caregiver with the titular name to care for makcik, who gradually cares for and accepts the robot as they live together in Kampong Lorong Buangkok, the last village in Singapore.
Dedicating the short as a "love letter" to his grandma and mum, who are in their 80s and 60s respectively, Raihan told us the idea for the story was sparked from his concern for them as they age and prefer to live alone.
He shared: "Growing up and now getting older, I realised that they really need someone to take care of them, and the moment they say no and don't want anybody else to [assist them], we start to take precautions, such as buying a certain kind of walker for my grandma, making sure that their home is more senior-proof and the toilet bowl is a bit more cushioned."
Likewise in IZ-1, where unspoken love between mother and daughter is portrayed through actions rather than words, Raihan said it's a reflection of his own family.
He said: "In my family, we don't know how to say 'I am sorry' and 'I love you' and it's always through actions... I grew up in that kind of environment, we are not huggers, it's literally through acts [that we show care for each other].
"If I had an argument with my grandma and she's upset with me, she would prepare breakfast the next morning, and I know things are going to get better. So it's really the little things; the gestures are never big and small gestures speak the loudest."
He added that besides cooking and buying food that he likes, they also support him in their own ways, such as his grandma buying multiple copies of the newspaper when he was featured in it.
While IZ-1 centres on love between family and found family that transcends feelings, Raihan also wanted to tell a story about looking onwards.
He shared: "The reason I set IZ-1 in the kampong is because I am a nostalgic person... and I just cannot help but look back at the kampong days and my childhood days... it's always easy to look back and think about the good old days.
"But in this case, what I wanted to show, at least in the first minute of the film, people would think that it's another kampong story, and when the drone crash into the house from the rooftop, they would realise that they are not in the past or today but the future. That's the message that I hope will get across — we can always have one foot in the past, but we must always be ready to have one foot in the future. During SG50, it's about where we came from and in SG60, it's about where we are going next."
Bringing the android IZ-1 to life fulfilled Raihan's love for kaiju (Japanese for strange creature) movies.
"We questioned whether it should be fully electronic and rolling around, all that stuff. But I felt that I wanted the bulkiness of a robot suit. I am a sucker for kaiju movies, all the old Japanese stuff, where they are robots but actually men in robots. I love that and wanted to show my version of it," he shared.
When designing IZ-1's costume, Raihan and the production designer wanted to keep it simple and pleasing to the audience and at the same time, not blurring the lines between human and automation.
"It's not meant to look like a Tesla robot... it's closer to a Wall-E than a Tesla robot, I just didn't want the slickness of it... If you have seen some videos of the Tesla robot, it's creepy because it talks like a human being. The boundaries between man and machine is already destroyed and I am just so bothered by that, so we decided that IZ-1 could be big, but it needs to be rounded," he shared.
IZ-1 was played by a theatre actor who paid attention to details in performing emotions through his gestures.
In addition, the team ensured that the background was never white so that IZ-1 is the focus of the scene.
And while the story is set in Kampong Lorong Buangkok, the team actually filmed it in Kuala Lumpur because there's only one kampung house in Buangkok that filmmakers are allowed to film in.
"We were limited and I had a specific idea about how I wanted things to look like, but it's impossible to do that (in Singapore). So we filmed it in Malaysia, but the tough part was making it look like Singapore," he added.
Little details such as the Singapore flag, Merlion, Sharity Elephant and Singa The Kindness Lion can be seen around the home to bring a sense of familiarity to local audiences.
Raihan's involvement in Kopitiam Days is not just in IZ-1, but also a cameo appearance in director Ong Kuo Sin's short The Morning Call.
The latter centres on the blossoming relationship between May (Jennifer Wilkinson) and her grandfather Lim (Yang Shi Bin) when she returns to Singapore with her mother Chui Hoon (Yvonne Lim) and accidentally loses the orange payphone from his kopitiam.
When asked how he got an acting part in the short, Raihan laughed: "I didn't have a choice. Eric and Lim Teck convinced me and I just thought it was fun."
He also shared that he appreciates Kuo Sin's works (Reunion Dinner, Number 1) and spent time on set watching him direct.
"I realised why his films are so good, because he's such a giving director. He doesn't give much to me because I have very little lines [in the short], but seeing how he directed the other actors, it's really fulfilling and I have so much to learn. I am so glad that I did it in the end because I got to learn from him," Raihan said.
Kopitiam Days will be shown through community screenings at the following locations and dates:
More information will be made available on the respective Facebook pages of the venues. The film will also be subsequently released on streaming platforms.
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