Michelle Yeoh and Sean Baker combine their Oscar-winning star power for their short film “Sandiwara,” which sees the actress portray all five characters whose stories intertwine within a Malaysian food market.
After premiering at the Berlinale earlier this month, the Academy Award winners brought their short stateside at a private residence in Hollywood last week, where Yeoh even compared the Self-Portrait project to her 2022 film, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
“I want to personally thank these two geniuses to my right. Of course, the incomparable Michelle Yeoh and Han Chong of Self-Portrait, who brought us together, had this wonderful idea. I just jumped right on board,” Baker began his introduction on Thursday. “It was such a pleasure to make this film, because it was just so fun. It was a running-gun, crazy, guerrilla indie project that we shot in two days in Penang. It’s in many ways a love letter to Penang and the wonderful food culture there.”
“First of all, Happy Chinese New Year. Year of the Horse, galloping; great successes, good health and happiness to everyone here. Thank you for coming and watching our crazy-ass two days of work,” Yeoh then took over. “[Han] said it’s going to be this great story with three characters … I see this room filled with clothes and wigs and he says, ‘Oh, I think you better have a look at the script.’ OK, I thought I’ve already seen the script. You know I know how to count, right? One, two, three — now there’s four and five. But then I thought, this is Sean Baker. Freaking hell. When do you get to work with a genius like that? And for two days, it was a masterclass.”
“I don’t know how you guys did it, I was five different characters,” she continued. “I mean, in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ I was always the one person jumping multiverses. This one, I literally was schizo-friendly.”
The Los Angeles premiere event was also attended by notable names such as Samantha Quan, Jane Levy, Simon Rex, Marissa Bode, Ally Maki, Highdee Kuan, Chriselle Lim, Leenda Dong, Lukita Maxwell, Alessandra Ambrosio, Barbara Palvin, Dylan Sprouse and Kate Moss.
“Sandiwara” is now available to stream on YouTube.
