Shopping Mall Boy

Genre
Human Interest, Coming-of-age Drama

Project Status
Development

Expected Shooting Location
Klang Valley

Logline
A journalist stumbles upon the story of her career: a teenage boy has been living within the nooks and crannies of a shopping mall, apparently alone and undetected. The unravelling of the mystery of the boy threatens to expose the shopping mall’s dark past.

Synopsis

Peter was 8 years old when he was separated from his mother at a shopping mall. Seven years later, a young journalist named Shafira discovers the now teen-aged Peter living all by himself in the mall undetected. She seeks to unravel the mystery of the boy as a way of advancing her languishing career. Meanwhile, Peter participates in a highly challenging mall-wide shopping competition, and shocks everyone by winning the grand prize – which brings him to the attention of Kenneth, a social media influencer and the mall owner’s son. Kenneth organised the shopping competition as a means to launder money, and is willing to kill anyone that gets in his way. Their paths cross when Shafira in her investigation discovers a dark history that links Peter to Kenneth on the night Peter’s mother disappeared. Kenneth makes numerous attempts to capture Peter. Shafira gets in the way when she tries to protect Peter, so Kenneth causes a gas leak explosion in her house, and seizes Peter. Peter however manages to outsmart Kenneth and escape. Angered, Kenneth chases Peter through the mall recklessly. They struggle and Kenneth eventually falls to his death from the 4th floor. Peter is finally able to escape his traumatic past, but leaving the mall hasn’t made him happier. Shafira decides to do one thing for Peter to help him move on…

Director
Sebastian Ng

Sebastian Ng studied and picked up degrees in Economics and Medieval History, but his true love had always been film and theatre. He spent a year learning the trade at the Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood; he was a nominee for the Student Editing award at the American Cinema Editors 2008 Eddie Awards. Returning to Malaysia, he worked as a production coordinator at the multiple Academy Award-winning visual effects studio, Rhythm & Hues. His name can be found on credits in such movies as “X-Men: First Class” (2011) and “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” (2011). Later Sebastian joined long-time collaborators We Jun and Lim Benji in their production company, Kinovisuals, participating in all their film, web and television projects in various capacities, especially editing and writing. He worked closely with writer-director We Jun for Kinovisuals’ first feature, “Hungry Ghost Diner” (2023). Sebastian’s most high profile project to date is “M for Malaysia” (2019), for which he is the film editor; it was the first Malaysian feature documentary to screen in local cinemas, and was submitted by FINAS to represent Malaysia for the International Feature category at the 2020 Academy Awards.

Producer
Lim Benji

Born in 1985, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Lim Benji graduated from Towson University in 2007 with a degree in Electronic Media and Film, and had since been involved in prominent social interest projects such as 15Malaysia (2009), Undilah (2011) and Hari Malaysia (2013) for multiple award-winning musician and film producer Pete Teo. Benji is a seasoned hand in the local film community, having himself produced and co-directed two independent feature-length movies, The Joshua Tapes (2010) and the multi-director omnibus Cuak (2014), which were released in theatres in Malaysia. Benji has also produced and co-directed several short films including the infamous Meter (2009), which was screened in various internationally-renowned film festivals, such as the Busan International Film Festival and Rotterdam. He is a regular collaborator and creative partner with We Jun, most recently with Kinovisuals’s first feature-length presentation Hungry Ghost Diner (2023), for which he was presented the Rotterdam Lab Award at Locarno Open Doors 2021.

Company
Kinovisuals

Kinovisuals is a FINAS-licensed production company based in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. A creative partnership between filmmakers We Jun and Lim Benji, it was founded in 2013 on the principle of delivering the highest production value on the resources available to the project, committed to utilising creative means and resourcefulness derived from our many years of experience in independent video production. Our passion is image-making and cinematic visuals, and we are relentless in our pursuit of “The Cinematic Image”. The film “Hungry Ghost Diner” was Kinovisuals’s first feature-length film project, followed up by “Die Die Top Student”, a Mandarin-language telemovie commissioned by Kuman Pictures for Media Prima’s OTT Tonton.