Surveillance Culture Examined in Venice Contender ‘Stranger Eyes’: ‘We Are Starting to Live Our Lives as Images for Others’

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua turns the lens on modern surveillance culture in his latest feature, ”Stranger Eyes,” which is vying for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

The film, which follows a couple grappling with their baby’s disappearance and the discovery of invasive surveillance footage, probes the psychological toll of constant observation in an increasingly interconnected world.

Yeo, whose previous film, “A Land Imagined,” won the Golden Leopard at Locarno, sees “Stranger Eyes” as part of cinema’s long-standing fascination with voyeurism. “Maybe because of an obsession to see itself, I think cinema has always been fixated about idea of the voyeur and we have many examples of that throughout film history, from Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ to Haneke and Lynch,” Yeo tells Variety. “I’m interested to ask the question of what being in this state of living under constant watchful eyes is doing to us,” Yeo adds. “Our existence is very much tied to being watched by others, to be liked, followed and subscribed, so much so that we are starting to live our lives as images for others, as though the image has become more real than who we are.” The project has been over a decade in the making. “I had written ‘Stranger Eyes’ before ‘A Land Imagined’ and was pitching the project with my producer Fran Borgia,” Yeo says. “This was more than 10 years ago.

I made a lot of rewrites to [make sure the film reflected] the person I have become over this time and also to update how our discourse on surveillance has changed greatly, especially after the pandemic.