Part of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s mission is to foster greater understanding through world cinema. This year 72 Foreign Language films were submitted for Golden Globes consideration. Here is an overview of one of them.

In a remote Malaysian village, local men gather to help Pak Awang (Wan Hanafi Su) to carry an abandoned and dilapidated house from the jungle to the village as a gift for his daughter who is getting married. This kind of house moving by hand is a common tradition in rural Malaysian villages.

In director Liew Seng Tat's film the situation gets complicated when an African immigrant, Solomon (Khalid Mboyelwa Hussein), running away from the police from the capital city of Kuala Lampur, takes shelter in the house. Walking by the house the village junkie Wan (Soffi Jikan) sees Solomon's shadow and runs to the local mosque to convey to villagers that there is a ghost in the abandoned house.

Panic ensues and a local shaman tells the villagers that they are encountering the devil himself – the “Oily Man”, a black oily ghost who hides in the jungle for the purpose of raping local women. The villagers decide to cross-dress in order to trap the Oily Man. Meantime Pak Awang gets very frustrated as his friends refuse to carry the house to the village because it is haunted. The film has some satirical political overtones, implying the subject of corruption when local politician (Othman Hafsahm) comes to the village to get additional votes.

While watching the film one might imagine the harsh conditions under which the director and his leading Malayan director of photography Teoh Gay Hian (Rain Dogs) worked. The director Liew was noticed at some international festivals with his first feature effort, Flower in the Pocket (2007). The critical success of Liew’s debut paved the way for the young director to receive grants from all over the world for his Men Who Save the World.

The film had its world premiere at the 67th Locarno International Film Festival on August 6, 2014. Its North American premiere was held at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival in September. The film was released in Malaysia on in November of 2014.

Serge Rakhlin