Alive (生)
2024 · 19m · Singapore
Directed by Taylor Ong Yin Meng
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
In a post-apocalyptic world where fossil fuels have run out, citizens must run on treadmills to generate electricity and hit mandatory output quotas. An 18-year-old girl struggling to meet her targets meets a disillusioned 30-year-old man seeking escape, and their bond pushes her to question what it actually means to be alive.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's doing dystopian burnout metaphors now—but a treadmill as both literal and existential anchor? That's genuinely weird in a way that doesn't feel arch or trying. The Mandarin dialogue + Singaporean perspective sidesteps the usual Western apocalypse ennui entirely.
Ong situates this within a lineage of body-as-machine cinema (Metropolis through contemporary Korean sci-fi) while maintaining formal restraint—the treadmill becomes geometric, ritualistic, almost Brechtian in how it frames the human cost of quotas.
The choice to stage intimacy and philosophical awakening in the same frame as mechanical repetition—letting the camera linger on two people simply *stopping* mid-stride—does more work than any voiceover ever could; that stillness against the hum is the entire film.
Festivals
- Singapore Youth Film Festival 2024, Best Cinematography (winner); nominated for Best Short Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Original Music, Best Lead Performance
- Tokyo Short Film Festival 2024