Malaysian actor-singer Jack Tan has just won the Best Actor award at the 20th Shanghai International Film Festival’s Asian New Talent competition, which was held in China recently.
The 26-year-old Tan won for his role in Shuttle Life, in which he plays an impoverished young man who has to look after his mentally unstable mother (portrayed by Taiwanese actress-director Sylvia Chang), while struggling to recover the body of his five-year-old sister who has been killed in a car accident.
Apart from acting, Tan is also an active singer as he part of the Malaysian pop duo Thomas Jack.
After the win, Tan wrote on Thomas Jack’s Facebook fanpage: “Really very happy. Wish to share the joy with everybody.”
Shuttle Life was filmed in Malaysia last year. It also won the awards for Best Film and Best Cinematography (for Taiwan’s Chen Ko-chin).
The movie was helmed by new Malaysian auteur Tan Seng Kiat, who was also nominated for the Best Director prize. That award eventually went to Takumi Satoh for the Japanese movie Blank 13.
Shuttle Life is produced by Ong Lay Jin and Roland Lee of Malaysian production studio More Entertainment. The script showed promise when it was named the grand prize winner at the 2014 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion in Taiwan, an award which included a cash grant of NTD$1mil (RM120,500).
Jack Tan will next star in the Malaysian action-drama titled Brother.
Jack Tan has made Malaysia proud by winning the Best Actor award at the 20th Shanghai International Film Festival’s Asian New Talent competition. Photos: More Entertainment
