“BUT if you stare long enough, these faces will become the faces of our loved ones.”

It’s a line that reverberates long after the film’s closing credits, tenebrous words of comfort from which we might emerge as the memory-keeper of each character’s intense loss and suffering. Directed by Edmund Yeo, Aqerat (We the Dead), which is derived from the Arabic word Akhirat, meaning “Afterlife”, works as an elegy for the departed but mostly for the living, who are condemned to live among shadows in order to survive.

Selected as one of the 15 in-competition titles for the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) out of more than 1,500 titles from 88 countries, Aqerat is Yeo’s second feature film. His feature debut River of Exploding Durians also made its world premiere at TIFF three years ago, a meandering drama loosely based on the real-life explosion of protests over the potential health and environmental hazards of a rare earth refinery. Aqerat similarly has its pulse on social concerns, specifically refugees and migrant workers who seek an “afterlife” in Malaysia but are invariably caught up in a vicious cycle of manipulation and exploitation. Their lives are juxtaposed with the local characters who dream of a better life in another country but are just as vulnerable to exploitation.

The first story strand weaves Hui Ling (Daphne Low) into the frame, a young runaway who works as a food delivery driver for a seaside warung located in a small northern Malaysian town. After each shift, she saves a portion of her meagre earnings so that she can begin a new life in Taiwan. One evening, her travel plans are thwarted when she discovers that her troubled roommate has done a runner with all her savings. Without any family support and with seemingly little choice, Hui Ling reconsiders an earlier proposition made by her boss, and begins working on his prosperous sideline human trafficking business. Hui Ling initially reaps significant financial gains as an interrogator, extracting money out of a complex chain of smugglers, but pays a hefty price when a boatload of refugees escape into the jungle and she is held accountable.

The second story strand weaves back to Hui Ling’s recent past, where she is convalescing in a spartanly equipped hospital after a serious accident. With only one friend visiting from Kuala Lumpur, hospital worker Wei (Hon Kahoe) subliminally connects with Hui Ling’s loneliness and numbed despair, with her bandaged face paradoxically reminding him of the loved ones he has deeply disappointed, particularly his own mother, who died thinking he had amounted to nothing more than a gangster. It’s a thought that plagues Wei, and one he painfully reveals to a colleague (Andy Darrel Gomes) as he struggles to make sense of his own suffering and the suffering he has caused others. His job as a hospital worker is a chance to redeem himself, whereas his compassion for Hui Ling is his only chance to feel genuine love.

Aqerat is a complex film of interweaving stories expressed through a kind of poetic eloquence that has come to define much of Yeo’s work. The deafening silence that pervades the first half the film gives way to the meditative, reassuring sounds of a wayang kulit performance, but even then, there’s unearthly silence underlying this beautifully executed scene. Other than Hui Ling, no other audience member is present, yet the puppet master (Tok dalang: Eyo Hock Seng) remains compelled to perform a tale of loss and longing as if to exorcise his own feelings of isolation, since, as an elderly man, he, too, is cast adrift from mainstream society.

Keeping in sync with the times, Aqerat is also an exploration into the curse of apathy where what’s lost, is the fundamental hope that happiness or fulfilment is possible. More sinister is just how some people profit from another person’s inability to make choices. This is particularly prevalent where there is high demand for cheap labour, which perpetuates an endless cycle of abuse and dehumanisation for profit. It’s hard to know where Hui Ling and Wei will end up, but for now – which is all that probably counts – they have each other. For the refugees, their plight to find an “afterlife” continues with even greater uncertainty.

Following Tokyo, Aqerat will be screened at the Singapore International Film Festival at the end of the month, and International Film Festival of Kerala at the beginning of December. While local screenings of the film are yet to be confirmed, Aqerat is likely to do well on the festival circuit, which tends to favour ethereal lyricism over polished dramas with an explicit message. Aqerat, like River of Exploding Durians, is a visual poem in which the emotions of the characters linger on. In that way, “we the dead” have an “afterlife” in our memories, merging with the faces of our loved ones, too. – November 4, 2017.

* Julia Mayer reads The Malaysian Insight. 

* Yesterday at the closing ceremony of the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), Edmund Yeo won the Best Director award, with lead actress Daphne Low receiving the new Tokyo Gemstone Award for emerging actors/actresses. “I was pretty much stunned when they announced my name, because our film is so small,” says Yeo. “I’m truly blessed that to have worked with my skeletal crew; my Aqerat family.”