Anthony Chen’s We Are All Strangers is a beautifully shot intergenerational drama about love and shifting family bonds in modern Singapore that, despite moments of sensory grace and strong performances, ultimately feels overextended and emotionally less resonant than it aims to be.
We Are All Strangers premiered in the Competition section of the 76th Berlinale as the fifth feature film of Singaporean director Anthony Chen. This intergenerational family drama explores everyday lives and love in a modern day Singapore, following 21-year-old Junyang (Koh Jia Ler) and his hard working father in the ups and downs of their respective new relationships, their experiences of falling in love, of unexpected pregnancies and the shifting of familiar bonds when new members are welcomed – or not – into already patchwork households.
It’s a film about connection with others, about learning how to understand your sense of self, whether at coming of age or mid-life, and is beautifully shot in the magical cityscapes of Singapore. For me, at least, it still fell flat, with its protracted screenplay and overdone plot points.
There are moments which show greatness and promise – the very opening shot, for example, is a remarkably elegant sequence of a character preparing a wok of noodles, and for me this was easily the film’s strongest moment; grounding the movie in sensory texture and the simple beauty of everyday rituals. Visually, the film continues to capture Singapore with style, motion and fluidity, but unfortunately the plot rarely lives up to the depth and beauty of the cinematography.
What ultimately undermined the experience for me was what felt like an unavoidable comparison with recent masterpieces that had similar intentions which were fulfilled to a much higher standard, such as Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days (2023) or Tsou Shih-Ching’s Left-Handed Girl (2025). Wenders’s movie is far more subtle in its philosophical reflections and representations of shifting familiar bonds. At one point in We Are All Strangers, for example, two characters are commuting back home together, reflecting on the simple beauty of travelling by bus but, unlike Wenders’s similar reflections, the moment feels contrived and stilted.
Shih-Ching’s film is even more similar in theme; an interwoven, intergenerational family drama set around a street food restaurant, with very similar plot points of patchwork families and unexpected pregnancies in contemporary Asian societies — respectively Singapore and Taipei. And yet Left-Handed Girl achieves something far more affecting with its magical realism and emotional subtlety creating a world that feels lived-in and resonant.
Even the more compelling strands of We Are All Strangers — class divides, immigrant identity, the pressures of social media — appear only briefly, never given the space to develop into something meaningful. Yeo Yann Yann’s stepmother was the most compelling character for me, but she exists in a film that seems otherwise unable to match her complexity.
In the end, I left unconvinced. Where Left-Handed Girl felt luminous and emotionally precise, We Are All Strangers felt clumsy and overdetermined and so isn’t one of my Competition recommends from this year’s Berlinale selection.
Our team is on the ground at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 12th to 22nd, 2026.
