Push-Pull 拉鋸
2024 · 8m · Malaysia
Directed by Fish Cheng
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tense
A Malaysian short rooted in the tug-of-war (拉鋸) of personal conflict — an interior, emotionally driven piece by an advertising creative turning to narrative film for the first time, made for the Kancil Sick Six New Directors Challenge.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
An ad creative making their first narrative film could've been a vanity project, but Cheng's restraint—letting the original score and interior tension do the heavy lifting instead of reaching for spectacle—is genuinely subversive in a field drowning in debut maximalism.
The commissioning of an original composition by Graph Studio situates this within a deliberate lineage of short form paired with bespoke music; the film's formal discipline in service of emotional architecture shows a director already conversant in craft syntax.
The decision to build the entire emotional architecture around a custom-composed score rather than rely on performance or visual spectacle alone—letting music become the primary narrator of internal conflict—is the kind of structural choice that transforms a debut from competent to essential.
Reviews
Fish Cheng and Graph Studio push and pull their way to a New Director Lotus Gold at ADFEST 2024 — Malaysia's only gold of the festival.
Push-Pull — shortlisted, Young Director Award 2024, Short Film (up to 10 minutes) category — directed by Fish Cheng, produced by Graph Studio Malaysia.
Festivals
- CinemaSHORT Asian Short Film Competition 2025
- Young Director Award (Cannes) 2024
- ADFEST 2024, Gold
- Malaysian Kancils Festival — Kancil Sick Six New Directors Challenge 2023, Jury's Choice