In the era of the streaming wars and the grief from closure of major cinemas, this year’s Singapore International Film Festival raised the pertinent question of the now and future state of communal film culture in Singapore across two panel discussions. Though framed differently, one gamified and playful, the other urgent and elegiac, SGIFilmFeud and #SaveOurCinemas, converged and circled the anxieties, structural challenges, and diminishing audience habits that now define cinema-going in Singapore. What emerged was a picture of an ecosystem wrestling with systemic constraints, cultural fatigue, and the need for a deeper, more sustained commitment from audiences, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

SGIFilmFeud: A Game With No Winners

Based off the hit Family Feud gameshow, SGIFilmFeud billed itself as an “interactive showdown” where industry guests would guess what Singaporeans think about their own moviegoing habits. Has streaming rewritten desire? Does the big screen still shimmer with meaning? A premise full of mischief and possibility. And yet, from the moment the half-filled room settled into its seats, something quieter hummed beneath the intended playfulness.

Hosted by Fauzi Azzhar, with two trios of filmmakers and film-adjacent personalities— filmmakers Cheng Chai Hong, Tan Siyou, and actress Tysha Khan facing off against producer Sam Chua Weishi, distributor Vincent Quek, and podcaster Benjamin Yap, the panel should have been raucous. After all, the winners walked away with film posters signed by Tony Leung and Shu Qi. But the real prize, it turned out, was the series of uncomfortable truths that kept surfacing each time participants “guessed” what the public felt about cinema today.

Much like its inspiration source, teams took turns guessing audience polls in response to various prompts, including their favourite film genres, reasons why they no longer visit the cinema, and even their vision of the future of cinema. But rather than a fast-paced match, we instead got a surprisingly mournful discussion from all players, with topics that ranged from a post-Covid lost culture of cinema-going, the difficulty of building hype for films being at the mercy of the social media algorithm, and plenty of gripes about policy that focuses on the wrong thing, or seems to only deal with short-term solutions, rather than a long, hard cultivation of genuine community.

What was supposed to be a guessing game about public sentiment quickly became a kind of confessional. With each revelation, where audiences revealed they believed cinema to be dying, the sense that film appreciation sits in a bubble that alienates the mainstream Singaporean, the players slipped into lament. Their banter was warm, even humorous at times, but their observations betrayed a deeper ache: cinema today feels both beloved and abandoned, cherished and yet forever on the brink.

By the end, the victory was a hollow one, and what lingered was not the statistics of audience perception, but the melancholic irony of the format itself. A game that wanted to entertain ended up mirroring the very precarity it set out to discuss. In trying to guess what Singapore thinks of its cinemas, the panel unwittingly revealed how fragile the ecosystem feels to those who nurture it, and the frustration over a lack of action, resources, and sense of paralysis. All they can do is keep doing what they can, and speak out, not as individuals but as what little community they already have so the powers that be might do something with a longer term impact.

#SaveOurCinemas: Conversation Turned Rallying Cry

#SaveOurCinemas began with the memory of lights switching off: The Projector at Golden Mile, FilmGarde’s withdrawal from operation, both closures that felt less like business decisions and more like sudden vacancies in the city’s cultural memory. The room, led by SGIFF board chairperson and filmmaker Boo Junfeng, carried a hushed attentiveness, as if everyone sensed they were gathered not just for a panel but for an autopsy and a call to action.

Onstage sat Cathy Liow (Marketing Manager, Film Exhibition Golden Village), actor Janice Koh, Minli Han (former FilmGarde founder), NTU media academic Pei-Sze Chow, Prashant Somosundram (former general manager of The Projector), and Terence Heng (VP of Innovation, Content & Engagement, Shaw), a constellation of voices spanning academia, exhibition, performance, and lived experience. Together they sketched the “perfect storm” that has hollowed out the cinema landscape: post-pandemic recovery pains, brutal rents, en-bloc redevelopment, shifting habits, and the relentless demand for space to justify its worth.

The story of survival, as it emerged, was messy and adaptive, trying to react quickly to the fast-changing landscape and developments while ensuring their own survival. Shaw doubling down on IMAX expansions. Golden Village courting VR concerts, corporate rentals, alternative content, anything to keep the doors open long enough for audiences to wander back and rekindle that love and relationship with cinema. And even the announcement of The Projector surviving, or rather, reincarnating, through a transfer of stewardship next February, yet trying desperately to preserve its soul.

But the true question pulsed beneath these anecdotes: What are we actually trying to save? A cinema is not merely a commercial unit, and yet policy treats it as one. Speakers pressed on outdated absurdities: dialect films requiring outsized regulatory hurdles, alternative content needing 40-day approval windows, grants designed to “bring in audiences” despite being unsustainable and fundamentally misaligned. Why is cinema placed under IMDA’s economic logic instead of a cultural ministry’s purview? What does support even mean if audiences themselves no longer carry the habit of going?

Again and again, the conversation returned to education, appreciation, and policy, three pillars that must work together if cinema is to remain a communal experience rather than a nostalgic artefact. And threading through it all was a quieter, almost tender recognition: that grief itself can galvanise. That if cinemas are to survive, they need not only innovation from exhibitors but a groundswell of public will, a cultural confidence that insists these spaces matter. Even as audience members griped during the Q&A segment, by the end, the panel felt less like a lament and more like a call to rebuild, to bring together a task force and steering committee that would patiently, collectively, insistently, amplify the cinema community’s voices to ensure the survival and flourishing of cinemas and filmgoing culture in Singapore.

Though SGIFilmFeud came dressed in whimsy and #SaveOurCinemas in solemn urgency, both discussions circled the same bruise. One probed audience sentiment through a playful façade; the other confronted industry realities with unvarnished honesty. Together they revealed a single story: cinema in Singapore is endangered not by streaming or technology alone, but by a fragile cultural ecosystem where policy, habit, and value no longer align.

And yet neither session surrendered to despair. In the feuding, in the grieving, in the restless questioning, there was also a flicker of determination, a belief that cinema still has a pulse worth guarding. If anything, these panels suggested that saving cinema is not simply about rescuing an industry. It is about choosing, as a society, to prioritise shared spaces, long-form attention, and a collective imagination that it can and will happen. Perhaps then, the question now is not whether cinema can survive, but whether we will decide that it should.

The 36th SGIFF runs from 26th November to 7th December 2025. More information available via their website here