On Saturday, November 29, at 5:40 p.m., NTT CRED Hall 2 hosted screenings of the International Short Film Competition A nominees, followed by a talk session. The three films presented were “A Misfit Tiger”, “The River Runs Still”, and “Paper Crane & Blue Frog”.
After the session, we conducted an interview with “A Misfit Tiger” director Bennial Soo. Using the voice translation feature of AI, he responded thoughtfully to each question.
When asked about the difficulties during production, he immediately mentioned the compressed shooting schedule. The film was completed in just four days. On top of this, filming conditions were far from ideal: the previous day’s rain left the ground muddy, the forest smelled strongly of monkey droppings, and some scenes had to be shot in locations requiring religious considerations.
Regarding the message behind the film, Soo explained that the story of a father searching for his missing son is also a way to convey the sense of alienation felt by Malaysians living abroad. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he himself was unable to return to Malaysia for three years, even missing his grandmother’s funeral. He recalled struggling with a quiet, unnamed melancholy and a gnawing anxiety as he found himself unable to fully adapt to life in Taiwan. These personal experiences—along with the words he was unable to express to his father at the time—became the foundation for the film.
We also asked about the meaning of the title. “Throughout the film, the Malayan tiger is used as a symbolic presence,” he said. “In Chinese, the title uses the word 馬來亞虎 directly, while the English title “Misfit Tiger” uses misfit to express three ideas: an eccentric person, a person who is lost, and someone who has lost their place in the world.” He added with a smile that he is especially fond of the Japanese title Maigo no Marē no Tora (“The Lost Malayan Tiger”), calling it “a very good title.”
The film contains many scenes depicting the son, Kah Chun, creating artwork. One of the most striking is the self-portrait in which he merges himself with the Malayan tiger. Soo explained that this painting was created specifically for the film by a younger colleague. “Through the search for his missing son, the father, Ben Seung, gradually becomes aware of the hardships his son faced—and of his own failure to truly understand him. Kah Chun’s creative works serve as a bridge of understanding between father and son,” he said.
Finally, in discussing the scene near the end where the father confronts an unidentified body and the scene in the forest where he encounters the tiger, Soo offered this interpretation: “It is possible that the missing son has already died. Or perhaps the tiger represents the son continuing to live on in a different form, in a different way.” He revealed that the ending is intentionally open, leaving its layered meanings to the audience’s interpretation.
