Calling all animation fans. Directors Ervin Han and Raúl García confront the horrors of the Japanese Occupation through the heartbreaking love story of two gifted young violinists in colonial Singapore.
At a glance
- Film: The Violinist
- Genre: Animated historical drama
- Languages: English and Japanese
- Runtime: 114 minutes
- Rating: PG
- Setting: Singapore and Southeast Asia
- Singapore Release: 17 September 2026
- Where to Watch: Golden Village cinemas
- EP Tip: Bring a packet of tissues
A journalist, a violin and an untold story
The Violinist begins decades after World War II (WWII) at Singapore’s Esplanade, where an elderly Fei—voiced by veteran actor Tan Kheng Hua—attends an orchestral performance.
Determined to interview the celebrated violinist, journalist Hugo Fernández—voiced by Spanish actor Enrique Arce—follows her from the concert hall to the gates of her home.
When his persistence finally earns him an audience with Fei, Hugo produces a childhood photograph and asks what public records cannot explain: why, despite having access to the finest instruments, she has performed with the same violin throughout her career.
A love shaped by music
As Fei sips hot tea and unravels the complex threads of her past, we’re transported to 1930s Singapore, where her younger self—voiced by Singaporean actor Fang Rong—grows up in an affluent Peranakan household.
A gifted violinist, Fei spends her days perfecting her craft under the tutelage of her Japanese music teacher, Keiko. Listening nearby is Kai—voiced by Singaporean actor Ayden Sng—an orphan adopted by the family’s domestic helper.
Spirited and righteous, Kai readily enters a fight to defend a bullied friend, revealing an instinct to protect others whatever the personal cost. Through the violin, however, he discovers a gentler, more creative side of himself—and an extraordinary musical instinct.
His raw talent becomes clear when he replaces Fei’s partner at her first recital. Their successful duet marks the beginning of a lifelong bond—first as childhood friends and musical partners, and eventually as two young adults falling in love.
The Japanese Occupation feels frighteningly immediate
Their charming love story is soon threatened by the approach of war. As news of Japanese forces advancing through the Malay Peninsula reaches Singapore, Kai puts his musical ambitions on hold and joins the resistance.
Before saying goodbye, he entrusts Fei with his violin—the same instrument at the heart of Hugo’s question—and an unfinished composition they promise to complete together after the war. But will they survive the war?
What The Violinist does exceptionally well is sustain tension. Even during its gentler moments, the knowledge of what is coming casts a shadow over the film. War, as it steadily reminds us, is brutal and indiscriminate. Innocent people are tormented and deprived of food and water. Lives are extinguished without ceremony.
When Japanese forces finally seize Singapore, a cold sensation settles in the pit of your stomach. The Occupation stops feeling like a chapter studied safely inside a classroom. Instead, it becomes an immediate reminder that being born in modern-day Singapore is—in no small part—a blessing determined by the roll of history’s dice.
Exploring the complexity of human nature
Even during its most tragic scenes, The Violinist retains considerable moral nuance. It never underplays the brutality of Imperial Japan’s invasion, but neither does it reduce every Japanese character to a faceless embodiment of evil. Instead, it examines individual conscience within the machinery of occupation.
This complexity is embodied by Takeshi Inoue, a Japanese officer voiced by actor Kazuya Tanabe. Although he understands where his allegiance lies, the husband and father cannot entirely suppress his compassion for Fei and the two children under her care.
Fei faces her own moral conflict after becoming involved with resistance agents resisting the Japanese occupation. Although driven by her desire to end the war and reunite with Kai, she struggles with the prospect of betraying Takeshi after experiencing his compassion firsthand.
Crucially, the film does not excuse the invasion itself. Rather, it reinforces the film’s larger truth: everyone pays a price in war. It destroys its victims most cruelly, while demanding moral surrender from those carrying it out.
When fiction intersects with Singapore history
What makes The Violinist especially compelling for history buffs is the way it incorporates a real Singapore war hero into its fictional narrative. When Lim Bo Seng—voiced by seasoned Singaporean actor Adrian Pang—first appears, it produces an immediate jolt of recognition.
His appearance is far more than a familiar name inserted for local recognition. Lim’s involvement anchors Kai’s journey within the real resistance efforts taking place across Japanese-occupied Singapore and Malaya.
Historical accounts identify Lim as a prominent anti-Japanese resistance leader who later joined Force 136, a covert unit that operated under the British Special Operations Executive. His responsibilities included recruiting agents and helping establish an espionage network behind enemy lines.
The film places Kai within this dangerous world. His decision to sacrifice music for the resistance also feels consistent with the character we met during his childhood: the spirited boy willing to enter a street brawl when someone weaker needed protecting.
Kai may be a fictional character, but the struggle into which he is drawn was painfully real. By tethering his personal sacrifice to Lim Bo Seng and the resistance movement, The Violinist transforms his disappearance from a romantic tragedy into part of a much larger story about wartime courage.
Animation that turns memory into magic
If the credits are anything to go by, it took a miniature army to animate The Violinist. Led by Singapore’s Robot Playground Media, the official Singapore–Spain–Italy co-production brought together Spanish studio TV ON Producciones, Italian production company Altri Occhi and creative collaborators from several countries.
Their efforts produced a hand-drawn 2D animated feature that made history at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The Violinist took the festival’s highest honour, the Cristal for a Feature Film, becoming the first Singapore-produced animated feature to win the award—before even receiving its theatrical release at home.
The prestigious recognition is thoroughly deserved. Modern-day Singapore looks enchanting beneath the night sky as Hugo trails Fei’s car on his scooter from the Esplanade to her private estate.
The animation shifts several gears when Japanese forces invade Singapore. The sight of Kai cycling through the streets as bombs rain down around him is simultaneously breathtaking and horrifying—a stunning piece of animation depicting an appalling moment in history.
Its full expressive power, however, emerges during the final sequence. Without revealing too much, music, memory and animation come together in a glorious crescendo, allowing reality to dissolve briefly into something almost magical.
When music says what words cannot
If you are wondering how good the music in the film actually is, The Violinist also won the SACEM Award for Best Original Soundtrack in a Feature Film at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
Its original score was written by Golden Horse Award-winning Singaporean composer Ricky Ho in collaboration with Spanish composer Isabel Latorre. The film’s lead violin performances were recorded by Singaporean violinist Joy Yong.
But music does not simply shape the film’s emotional landscape. It is the unspoken language through which Fei and Kai first understand each other—and the thin yet unbreakable thread that continues binding them together after war forces their lives apart.
When Kai entrusts Fei with his violin, the instrument becomes more than a reminder of the musician—and the man—she loves. It carries his musical voice, the future they imagined and the promise they made to finish his composition together.
The unfinished piece consequently represents a life suspended by war. As the years pass and Fei continues performing with Kai’s violin, every note becomes an expression of memory, longing and stubborn hope—the things she can no longer say to him but has never stopped feeling.
Humanising Singapore’s dark history
For those of us who’ve sat through Singapore’s education system, much of what we know about the Japanese Occupation came from social studies textbooks. Within the safety of our classrooms—and the distance afforded by peacetime—our understanding of WWII remained largely academic.
What The Violinist does, however, is turn that history into something profoundly human. Its fictional love story gives emotional weight to one of the darkest chapters in Singapore’s past by placing two ordinary lives against a painfully real historical backdrop.
It has been fascinating to witness how the international animation community has responded. The international accolades it has earned have even stirred hopes that it might enter the Academy Awards conversation—particularly in the animated feature category.
Whether or not those hopes materialise, its most meaningful achievement at home may be something less glamorous but far more enduring. The Violinist offers Singaporeans another way of encountering our history.
Through the fictional lives of Fei and Kai, it invites us to contemplate the fear, courage and sacrifice experienced by real people during the Occupation—including resistance figures such as Lim Bo Seng.
For that reason alone, The Violinist deserves to be experienced by Singaporeans in cinemas. History is no longer merely something we learn from a textbook. For 114 minutes, it becomes something we feel.
Review by Arman Shah
All images courtesy of Robot Playground Media
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