The lives of regular people in a pivotal year

SINGAPORE's 50th birthday celebrations will spread to the big screen with 1965 - a film on the life-changing events in the country half a century ago. But like the birth of a nation, putting the movie together was not without its headaches, says executive producer Daniel Yun. The long-delayed project was beset with problems from the start, particularly from a script which had to be revised some 60 times before Mr Yun and fellow executive producer Melvin Ang were happy with it.

That's why Mr Yun insists that the timing of the movie's release is pure coincidence and not designed to cash in on the country's jubilee. The film follows several ordinary people in the year 1965, and how their lives are changed when a young Chinese girl is kidnapped, leading to escalating racial tensions and events that shaped Singapore that year.

"It's quite quick-paced," says Mr Yun, CEO of Blue3 Pictures. "The climax comes quite early in, and after that it's just the unravelling of the characters."