Pearlly Chua

In a community of farmers living on the Malaysia-Thailand border, Hong Im recently lost her husband under mysterious circumstances. Hong Im uses black magic to address villagers’ everyday issues until she encounters a ghost that reveals a secret about her husband’s death.

Discovering a severed bird that is missing its body, Ah Ger decides to make a mock body for the poor creature and give it a proper burial. Her intentions prompt an unexpected visit by the ghost of her late grandmother appearing in the form of the dead bird, urging Ah Ger to help find and care for her egg. Her actions caused her to be terribly misunderstood and punished by her mother.

If It’s Not Now, Then When? mostly takes place in an apartment inhabited by three members of a family (though never at the same time): mother Pearlly Chua (from Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone), daughter Tan Bee Hung and young son Kenny Gan. Their father seems recently to have died. The mother leaves early and returns late, out on long walks in the park with a lover whom the daughter and her best friend try to spy on. The daughter pecks away at a computer at work and has a desultory affair with her married boss, which he carries on between his business and family phone calls. And the son breaks into cars and “recycles” the electronics he finds.

Ping Ping is 19 and wants to go to Japan to work in a car parts company. She's under the guardianship of her aunt, Madame Tien, who shuffles her between two jobs - working in a pig farm, and cleaning dishes in a rundown restaurant. Tien is also involved in a 'baby factory' scheme, pairing young women with migrant workers and then selling the babies for money. Both survive with each other in a love-hate symbiotic manner, until a truth about her aunt is revealed to Ping Ping.

1986, in a Malaysia-Thailand border village, a recently widowed Siamese woman still cooks her husband's favourite dish. After her son brings the husband's ancestral tablet home, the durian tree starts bearing its fruits while red spinach grows under the tree...

Mrs. Chew and her three daughters run a small but flourishing restaurant. Most of the customers come for the house specialty: Homemade Curry - cooked from an old family recipe. Nobody suspects that the special ingredient that turns Mrs Chew's curry from standard fare into a gourmet's delight is human flesh!

Cheong, a Chinese man, falls sick after a row with his neighbour. His wife Yan is desperately looking for a remedy to cure her husband. Throughout the journey, Yan endures strange encounters and unearthly experiences. Finally, Yan is convinced that she should seek help from the village shaman. Mysteries, legends and shamanism surround Yan with unknowns yet to be solved.

In 1990, Neurologist Lam Sik Ka and his former flame suffer from the generational sleep curse that rooted in their both families war engagement during World War Two. Lam tries to save her flame from the grudge.