The schedule for the 2016 Three Rivers Film Festival was released today, and the 2016 Singaporean film Apprentice(徒刑)---the lone Asian movie on the program---will play on November 19.
A May 2016 Variety review summarizes:
Privileging psychic scars over physical violence, and battling aggression with introspection, Singaporean director Boo Junfeng’s “Apprentice” shifts its attention from the prisoners to the staff, concentrating on a soft-spoken corrections officer who finds himself on the fast track to become chief executioner on the Malay equivalent of Death Row.The movie plays on November 19 from 9:30 pm at the Regent Square Theater (map), though at the time of this post tickets are not yet available online.
Though he offers a platitude about “wanting to help people” during the job interview, Aiman (Fir Rahman) has his own personal reasons for wanting to work in the Larangan Prison, though his motives emerge only gradually over the course of the film. What the young man doesn’t realize when he lands his new gig is how swiftly he will be brought under the wing of the prison’s chief executioner, Rahim (Wan Hanafi Su), who takes no pleasure in his grisly profession, but accepts the heavy responsibility nonetheless. Nor does Aiman anticipate the obligatory background check they will run on him — and how it will inevitably look when they learn his father was hanged in that very same prison.
