PETALING JAYA, April 2 — For a film depicting the dark underbelly of Kuala Lumpur where criminal gangs are brought to light to audiences, the last thing on director Zahir Omar’s mind was making it to the international festival circuit.
Fly by Night was never intended to be a festival film but instead, the film made it to seven international festivals — an impressive feat for a filmmaker’s debut feature film.
“We were caught by surprise when it got into the festival circuit because it’s quite a mainstream story,” Zahir told Malay Mail.
“We were shocked and worried at the same time. The fact that it made it to various festivals made us wonder: Is our film a festival film? Is it a bit too wanky?”
Stressing that his film is not a festival flick, Zahir credits the acclaim to good timing as more film festivals loosen their requirements to incorporate more mainstream movies in their roster.
The film, predominantly in Mandarin with a smattering with Malaysian languages such as Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien and English, tells the story of two brothers moonlighting as taxi drivers (played by Fabian Loo and Sunny Pang) who extort wealthy passengers to settle their debts.
Unbeknownst to them, the police detected their illicit activities, placing them on their radar.
Written by Ivan Yeo, Frederick Bailey and Dain Said, Fly by Night was shot in 23 days around Kuala Lumpur.
“The themes are universal and grounded in human nature. There’s no black and white.
“What it has is a Malaysian identity to it, something a little bit more exotic but when you watch it, the message is the same anywhere in the world,” the BMW Shorties 2007 winner said on the film’s resonance with international audiences.
The film is finally heading home where it will premiere to domestic viewers next week.
It is distributed by Skop Production, the homegrown production company that made the Munafik series and Misteri Dilaila.
“We went with a Malay distributor which is nice because we want the film to transcend race and language.”
Zahir believes Fly by Night exemplifies how far Malaysian cinema can go if the industry bands together.
“We have the indie guys, the art guys, the Chinese drama guys, commercial guys, feature film guys, Chinese Indian Malay actors all in one production and a Malay director who doesn’t speak Mandarin — it’s a Malaysian movie,” said Zahir who spent the last 10 years directing short films and commercials.
That’s certainly saying something for Malaysia’s fragmented film industry that is often bound by language.
“The film industry here is very language based, even when you’re trying to sell the film to distributors — we packaged it as a Mandarin film but there are all these other languages in it which is a very Malaysian thing to do,” he said.
Zahir added that Fly by Night will make the industry realise that there’s a larger pool of actors that can crossover linguistically as well as foster film-television synergy, talent-wise.
“There should be more crossover, there are a lot of talents here that we should tap into. We have been separated for too long,” Zahir said.
The filmmaker cut his teeth as the late Yasmin Ahmad’s assistant director on Sepet, taking charge of handling extras and managing logistics.
While he wasn’t very close to the darling of Malaysian cinema, he understood much later that what Yasmin did was providing social commentary in her work.
“You understand the ‘why’ more than the ‘how’ — I think a lot of people doing film get too caught up in the ‘how’, they didn’t really grasp the ‘why’.
“And as I grew older, I knew why she was doing it so that has stuck with me, holding a mirror up to society,” he said.
Fly by Night opens in cinemas nationwide on April 11.
