Sandcastle

During a brief stay with his grandparents, teen En (Joshua Tan) learns his late father may have played a role in Singapore’s Chinese student protests of 1956. Exposition disguised as character development ensues, to the point where even nightclub conversation and a girlfriend seem added more for information delivery than drama. En’s interest in photographs and interactions with his Alzheimer’s-stricken grandmother reinforce the themes of cultural memory and the scripting of history, but a mawkish tone and graceless presentation ultimately submerge a potent—and in its home country, potentially controversial—political statement.