A brand-new documentary is set to spotlight the rise of ballroom culture across Southeast Asia. 10s Across the Borders, the debut feature by Singaporean filmmaker Chan Sze-Wei, will have its world premiere at the 2025 BUSAN International Film Festival (BIFF), competing in the Wide Angle Documentary Competition.

What began as an act of friendship and documentation soon became a deeply personal journey. Chan was invited by their friend Sun, a Thai dancer and organiser, to capture the fledgling ballroom community taking root in the region. Over time, the camera turned inward as much as outward, with Chan’s filmmaking entwined with their own coming into self.

“As a queer person and queer parent who’s never fit in, the communities in this film gave me the courage to come out as non-binary,” Chan reflects. “We made this film to celebrate ballroom’s power of activism, allyship, and belonging.”

The documentary centres on three figures shaping Southeast Asia’s ballroom scene: Sun in Thailand, Teddy in Malaysia, and Xyza in the Philippines. Through their stories, 10s Across the Borders captures how performers carve out safe spaces of expression and resilience, while honouring the roots of ballroom in New York City’s Black and Latinx queer communities.

The synopsis promises an intimate portrait of kinship with four trailblazers building chosen families and cross-border connections, while balancing the pressures of biological ties and wider global networks.

Behind the scenes, the film itself has reportedly been a bold collaborative effort spanning Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Germany. Producers include Alemberg Ang (Renoir, Cannes 2025), Yasmin C. Rams (Go Heal Yourself), and Tan Si En, whose Dreaming & Dying won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.

Funding came from the Singapore Film Commission, Hessen Film, the DMZ Development Fund, and BIFF’s Asian Cinema Fund, with development support from platforms such as Cannes Docs and Sheffield DocFest’s MeetMarket.

Chan’s artistic practice bridges film, dance, and activism. Since 2016, their experimental works have been presented internationally in spaces such as the Singapore International Festival of the Arts and Dança em Foco in Brazil. Across mediums, their work consistently interrogates questions of identity, embodiment and social change through movement.

With its premiere in BUSAN, 10s Across the Borders marks both a milestone for its director and a historic moment for Southeast Asian queer cinema, celebrating ballroom not only as performance, but as a political act of joy, kinship and survival.

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