\n\tSingapore has never really had a wuxia feature film \u2013 though the genre was a fixture of local television in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a wave of wuxia serials cast actors like Li Nanxing and Zhu Ming. <\/p>\n
\n\tNelson Yeo<\/a> is closing that gap with \u201cThe House on the Moon<\/a>,\u201d a lunar reimagining of the Chang\u2019Er myth landing in Locarno\u2019s international competition. Variety is exclusively unveiling a clip from the film, ahead of its world premiere.<\/p>\n \n\tWuxia is the Chinese genre of sword-fighting heroes and martial fantasy that has powered everything from King Hu\u2019s classics to Wong Kar-wai\u2019s \u201cAshes of Time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was quite ambitious when we first started having this idea of picking wuxia,\u201d Yeo tells Variety. \u201cFor this one I decided to fully embrace genre and see where the film can take us.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYeo has a habit of returning to Locarno. He attended the festival\u2019s Filmmakers Academy in 2018, then premiered his 2023 debut feature, \u201cDreaming & Dying,\u201d there, where it won the Filmmakers of the Present Golden Leopard and the Swatch First Feature Award. Three years on, he\u2019s back for a third time.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m super glad to be back in Locarno,\u201d Yeo says.<\/p>\n \n\tThe film reimagines the legend of Chang\u2019Er, the moon goddess, and her husband, the archer Hou Yi, picking up the story after Chang\u2019Er ascends to the moon and setting her on a journey to its dark side alongside a bandit from Earth. For Yeo, the appeal was less about honoring the myth than filling in what it leaves out.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe original myth has always been so simple,\u201d Yeo says. \u201cAs a kid, you can pretty much recite the whole story in a couple of lines and people will get it. But then at the same time, you always wonder what are these characters really going through? What are their emotions like?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe points to Peng Meng, the disciple mentioned only in passing in the traditional tale, as the character who benefited most from that expansion. \u201cIt\u2019s just a very basic foundation,\u201d Yeo says. \u201cSo I felt like I have more, I can take more liberties in terms of like building the character.\u201d Even so, he adds, the story remains centered on its heroine: \u201cChang\u2019Er is traveling to the dark side of the moon throughout the film, but essentially, it\u2019s about a journey inside herself and finding herself again and finding her own voice, in fact.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat affinity for late-1980s and 1990s wuxia runs deep. Yeo grew up on Hong Kong genre cinema and the wuxia television serials that were once a fixture of Singaporean TV, and he cites Tsui Hark\u2019s \u201cZu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain\u201d as a touchstone alongside Wong Kar-wai\u2019s \u201cAshes of Time.\u201d But reviving that language now came with practical headaches. \u201cSourcing for the props was a nightmare,\u201d Yeo says. \u201cAnd in terms of location wise, because Singapore being such a modern city, we had a lot of trouble finding proper locations to shoot the film.\u201d<\/p>\n