15

15 is a local movie about the lives of youth gangsters in Singapore directed by Royston Tan. The film shows us the lives of 5 real-life juvenile gangsters, all aged 15, giving an accurate depiction of Chinese teenage gang-life in Singapore. Rather than scripting the movie or employing professional actors, Tan attempted to capture the troubled lives of his characters in realistic fashion, apparently without much prior scripting. At the of release, the MDA ruled the movie to be released uncut under  R(A) rating. However the SPDF was concerned that fights could break out given the use of real gang names, locations and secret society chants in the movie, requesting cuts/edits to be made through the MDA for law and order reasons. As a result, Tan had to make  many as 27 cuts to the film. Opposition was also raised against heavy of Hokkien in movie as the government was trying to encourage use of only Mandarin as the Chinese mother tongue Singapore.

I felt the function of this film was to bring about greater awareness and consciousness about our society. The film was about the lives of local gangsters that whether or not we ever get a glimpse of it in our lives, does in fact exist within our society. Since gangsters are pushed out to the far fringes of our society, most of us do not understand them, much less even consider their presence. As a result they become marginalised, further pushing them out of our society. The film seeks to bring about greater understanding of this community in the general public so that we may employ a wider perspective when pondering about these issues.