KUALA LUMPUR: The country's first international Iban horror film has emerged a winner at the Singapore World Film Carnival, and has also received nominations at another film festival this weekend.
Funded by the National Film Development Corporation (Finas), Belaban Hidup: Infeksi Zombie won Best Feature Film in Singapore recently, and has been nominated for Best Horror Film and Best Film at the International Symbolic Art Film Festival which will take place in Russia on Saturday.
The film is about a group of orphans who were captured by a mad scientist wanting to conduct experiments on them.
"The story is full of supernatural and mythological elements from the cultures of Sarawak's and Borneo's indigenous people," said Belaban Hidup director Ray Lee, 45, in a recent news report.
He said that the film was the brainchild of screenwriter Misha Minut from Limbang, Sarawak who doubled as its producer. Both of them began work on Belaban Hidup in 2016.
"At first we wanted it to be a short film, but we later realised that it would be better to develop it into a feature film since not many Dayak films have made it to our cinemas," said Lee.
"The dialogue is both in Malay and Iban, but mainly Iban, and the film contains lots of scenes of Dayak warriors in action."
Lee said that Misha and him planned to have Belaban Hidup enter some film festivals in the United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, France and the United States over the next few months.
Belaban Hidup is distributed by Metrowealth Pictures and will be screened in cinemas at year's end.
It stars Misha, Pekin Ibrahim, Altimet, Pablo Amirul, Anna Melissa, Cassidy Panggau, Indonesian singer Tegar and Slovakian actress Katrina Grey.