A Southeast Asian debut rarely walks straight from the festival circuit into a North American theatrical release, and when it does, the decision says as much about the distributor as the film. Dekanalog, the New York boutique that has built its name importing singular international voices, has now placed that kind of bet on Amoeba, the first feature by Singapore’s Tan Siyou — a wager that a hyper-local story about schoolgirls and buried gangster myth can find an audience an ocean away.

The company has taken North American rights from Bangkok-based sales agent Diversion, in a deal negotiated by Diversion’s Mai Meksawan and Dekanalog’s George Schmalz. It is a characteristic pickup for a distributor whose catalogue runs to the likes of Quentin Dupieux and Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese: films that travel on authorship rather than franchise. For Diversion, still shopping the title across other territories, the sale plants a flag in the most competitive arthouse market in the world.

Amoeba is a coming-of-age story with a political undertow. It follows Choo, a 16-year-old dropout played by Ranice Tay, who returns to her elite all-girls Chinese school and falls in with three rebellious classmates. Chafing against authoritarian teachers and school doctrine, the four girls unearth the erased legends of gangsters who once ruled the streets of colonial Singapore — and resolve to form a gang of their own. Shot by cinematographer Neus Ollé, it turns teenage defiance into a reckoning with conformity and national memory.

The film reaches North America already garlanded. After its world premiere in the Discovery section of the Toronto International Film Festival, it swept much of the Asian circuit: Best Youth Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, a Golden Horse nomination for Tan as best new director, Best Film in QCinema’s New Horizons strand, and three prizes at Pingyao, including best actress for Tay. That pedigree — a first-time female director with a near-unanimous critical record — is precisely the capital Dekanalog is buying.

Produced by Singapore’s Akanga Film Asia alongside a spread of European co-producers, Amoeba premiered at Toronto in September 2025 before travelling on to Busan and beyond. Dekanalog has not yet dated its North American release, and the rollout will test whether a Singaporean teen drama can convert festival acclaim into arthouse ticket sales.

There is a neat symmetry in the deal: a film about four girls excavating a city’s buried history, insisting they belong on streets never meant for them, has just talked its way onto some of the most guarded screens in the world.

Tags: acquisition, Amoeba, Dekanalog, Tan Siyou