Freeway (2024 short film)

Written on November 4th, 2024.

Freeway

Dir. Cheng Chai Hong

Live Action / 19:18 / English / Malay

Singapore Youth Film Festival (SYFF) 2024

SYNOPSIS: Law-abiding and henpecked civil servant SIRAJ has been living within the comfortable boundaries of his life, playing it as safe as possible. A short-lived attempt at investing gets him into financial trouble, but whets his appetite for risk. Against his wife’s instructions, SIRAJ decides that a trip up to the casinos in Malaysia is his quickest way out. His mistakes catch up with him in the worst ways possible, forcing him to come to terms with the path he’s taken.

It begins on a rainy evening in Singapore as Siraj, a middle-aged civil servant, receives a phone call from his wife. He has invested in stocks, only to get in financial trouble, and she’s furious. Still, she offers to help with his debt, but Siraj decides a trip to a Malaysian casino will be his quickest way out. He rents a cheap car, loads the boot with cash withdrawn from his emptied bank account, and sets off across the freeway. From here, the film takes place in the span of a single night as the car travels across roads enveloped in darkness, the available light from the surrounding lampposts and the car’s headlights illuminating only brief images of the unfamiliar environment. Siraj has stepped out of his ordinary world and into an abyss he cannot see. As he enters this shadowy unknown, his desperation deepens and blinds him, ultimately pushing him to a harrowing point of no return.

Freeway (2024) is a Singapore crime drama short film from writer-director Cheng Chai Hong, depicting the ripple effect of greed and its instinct to destroy for personal gain. Siraj, the main character, is initially blessed with a comfortable life in Singapore, with a government job and a supportive wife. Yet, the greed of wanting more leads him to invest blindly in stocks and borrow from loan sharks. The events of the film act like a final test – will Siraj repent and face his obstacles together with his wife, or continue to run from his problems?

Later in the film, after countless unfortunate encounters and at his wit’s end, Siraj is given one last chance to redeem himself when a fellow Singaporean man offers him a safe trip home. Having found some semblance of familiarity he could trust, he is initially relieved, able to return to his place of comfort. However, he is soon overwhelmed by a new fear; Unable to confront the unresolved issues awaiting him back home, Siraj directs his frustration towards the man, resulting in an even more tragic turn of events.

In a provocative closing scene, Siraj throws his red Singapore passport into a fire. As it slowly disintegrates, it serves as a perfect depiction of the ironic predicament he has found himself in. Generally considered one of the most “powerful” passports in the world, Siraj has burned his options and, in so doing, killed his freedom. Not only is he now a stateless fugitive with no home to return to, but he has also erased his identity, no longer recognising the person he has become.

The title of the film, Freeway, refers to the road Siraj traverses from Singapore to Malaysia – the route he thought would be an easy way out to being free of his problems. But by the end of the film, this path can be interpreted as limbo, the crossroads where Siraj finds himself stuck in, with no place to belong.

Freeway was screened as part of Singapore Youth Film Festival (SYFF) 2024. Audiences can look forward to Cheng Chai Hong’s next work, We Can Save the World, a science-fiction comedy feature film.