SINGAPORE — When Nur Shahidah was seven, her father wrapped a shoebox in cellophane tape and wrote a note addressed to “The People of Singapore”. It read: “Beware! Singapore is not safe from today, anytime, anywhere. Revenge is sweet. Help save lives.” He then placed the box under the seat of a MRT train.

Shortly after, he called the police to report about a bomb. It was a hoax.

He was subsequently convicted under anti-terror laws and jailed 3½ years.

The incident, which took place in 2004, left an indelible mark on the family, but Shahidah, 20, does not shy away from the truth of her past.

Instead, she decided to make a short film about it as her final year project for her diploma in film and television at Temasek Polytechnic (TP) School of Design and it will be shown at the Singapore Discovery Centre (SDC) as part of its annual Singapore Stories initiative.

Shahidah, now 20, recounted about how it never fails to shock people when she tells them about her childhood. 

“I feel that we should know about how terrorism affects the family, and not just the terrorist himself,” she said.

“My main intention is (to ask) for Singaporeans to be there for your neighbours and not shun them,” added Shahidah, who described her father as a “family-oriented” man whose crime was “out-of-the-blue” for everyone who knew him.

Titled Azza, after the titular character, the film follows a family’s trials and tribulations as they came to terms with the consequences of their father’s crimes.

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Describing the 26-minute film as “90 per cent” true to reality, Shahidah, who is the film’s producer, decided to base it on her elder sister’s experience.

Her sister, who was 10 years old at the time, was questioned by the police as “one or two” of her belongings were used to make the fake bomb, including “a science file with her name on it”.

As the lead role was emotionally demanding, they auditioned 14 girls over six months but could not find the “right one” until a chance encounter during a location recce at Dakota Crescent led them to 12-year-old child actress Vinathi Naidu, who was there filming a scene for a Vasantham series.

To ensure the story is as authentic as possible, Shahidah, together with her teammate and Azza’s director and screenwriter Eleaner Choo, 21, spent hours interviewing her relatives, including her mother, sister, and maternal grandmother.

It was also during these conversations that Shahidah found out about an incident that happened less than a year following her father’s arrest.

Struggling to come to terms with what had happened, Shahidah’s mother experienced suicidal tendencies. In one scene, “she was making porridge for us (and) she put some form of pesticide in it”, Shahidah said. But thankfully, her mother did not serve it to them.

Filming and preparing for that particular scene especially, was hard on Shahidah, and for the rest of the crew as well.

Choo estimated the emotionally-charged scene, where three actors – including Vinathi and a five-year-old boy who played her younger brother – are all crying, took them about eight hours to get a perfect shot.

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Despite the bad memories, Shahidah’s family were very open and supportive of the project.

For instance, Choo noted that Shahidah’s mother wrote the lyrics to the film’s theme song, a lullaby about a father’s love for his children.

“(All the) home scenes were shot at her house... The lead character’s bedroom is Shahidah’s bedroom, and initially it was brown in colour, we painted it to pink to match the character. We turned over the whole house, we even changed the living room, the furniture and the colours,” said Choo.

Shahidah’s mother, who was a housewife before her father was imprisoned, got back on her feet by taking on three to four odd jobs to support the family.

She has since remarried and now owns multiple businesses, including her own beauty parlour and a logistics company she co-owns with her husband.

“I think my family and I have moved on; this whole event has made us stronger, because it taught us how to fend for ourselves,” said Shahidah, who is no longer in contact with her father.

Azza is one of three films that will be shown as part of the SDC’s Singapore Stories initiative, which aims to nurture young film-makers.

The two other films are Gallant, a film inspired by the Japanese invasion of Singapore, also by TP School of Design students; and Rust Red, a film by a group of Ngee Ann Polytechnic Film & Media Studies students about how three characters cope with a looming end-of-the-world catastrophe.
 

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Azza, Gallant and Rust Red will be exclusively screened at SDC iWERKS Theatre from July 1 for a year. Admission is free for all Singaporeans and permanent residents.