One Last Supper
2025 · 24m · Singapore
Directed by Jerold Lim
Genres: comedy, drama, fantasy
Tones: humorous, melancholic, tender
A 26-year-old accountant named Chloe inherits her mother's ability to perceive spirits and reunites annually with the dead during the Hungry Ghost Festival. When her mother dies and Chloe forgets to leave an offering, she must retrace her mother's past to bring her soul home before the spirit world's gates close forever.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a ghost story to go ethereal and sentimental, so Lim does something better: he lets humor do the heavy lifting, turning a cultural ritual into something that actually says something true about how Asian families grieve without ever naming it. The contrarian move isn't the premise—it's the restraint.
Lim's braiding of the Hungry Ghost Festival into a classical mother-daughter reconciliation arc demonstrates formal sophistication; the film knows exactly where it sits in a lineage of diaspora cinema and ritual-based storytelling, executing that lineage with considered restraint rather than explanation.
The entire film hinges on a single decision: treating humor not as tonal relief but as the actual emotional language of the family, which means every comedic beat carries the weight of unspoken love—and that choice transforms a 24-minute short into something that feels complete and lived-in on a shoestring.
Reviews
A touching film that blends humor, grief, and tension between a mother and daughter.
Makes full use of its short runtime — ranked #2 of SYFF day 2.
Beautifully shot and paced, with an airtight script... punching way above its paygrade.
Gorgeous, surreal shots all around — cinematography that plays around with alignment and symmetry.
Explores intergenerational trauma, unexpressed love, and ancestral worship traditions, blending humor, grief, and tension between mother and daughter.
Festivals
- CinemaSHORT Asian Short Film Competition 2025, Audience Choice Award; Singapore Spotlight Award
- AAIFF Asia's Independent Film Festival 2025
- Singapore Youth Film Festival 2025
- ECU - The European Independent Film Festival 2025