"Like us" on Facebook

A BETTER PLACE THAN THIS

is a short film about a Singapore death-row guard who tries to help a young woman convicted of drug trafficking come to accept her fate despite a bizarre contradiction - he is her executioner.

The film was inspired by the real life executioner Darshan Singh who since 1959 estimates he has hanged up to 1000 condemned men and women, each at the crack dawn on any given Friday. But far from a sadistic mass-murderer, in interviews Darshan comes off as a charismatic and spiritual man, filled with equal amounts of humility and humour. He felt a spiritual bond with his common man and took it upon himself to counsel the men and women on death row, even befriending his eventual victims. He listened to their hopes, fears and dreams, and helped them come to grips with their fate. Some would accept only Darshan as their executioner and even included him in their final will and testament, entrusting him until the utterance of those ominous words: “I am going to send you to a better place than this." For more in formation on Darshan, see Alan Shadrake’s book Once a Jolly Hangman.

We shot A Better Place Than This on beautiful Kodak Vision 3, Super-16 in Los Angeles and Singapore. We are looking for finishing funds to move us out of Post Production and into a festival near you! 

DIRECTOR WHO?

Daniel was born in Singapore and raised in Singapore, Jakarta, Sydney and Los Angeles. While reading Philosophy and Journalism at the University of Sydney he was extremely active in Sydney’s theatre scene before moving onto distribution at ICON Films Australia in 2007. He subsequently lived in Beijing as a freelance journalist and wrote for such publications as YEN, Dazed & Confused, The Sydney Morning Herald, Arena UK and Vice Magazine. In the midst of the Olympic Games, he returned to Los Angeles to pursue an MFA in Film Production at the University of Southern California. Most recently his screenplay for the short Blackbird was a Semi-Finalist for the 2011 Student Academy Awards for Best Dramatic Short.

AWARDS

We were fortunate to win these awards before even starting Principal Photography:

2011 Jeffrey Jones Award for Screenwriting

2011 FotoKem Award

2011 Panavision Young Filmmaker Award

Kodak Film Stock Grant

YOUR SUPPORT

So where exactly would your generosity go? Here are a few things:

Composer: our talented British-Iranian composer Ram Khatabakhsh needs to eat. Especially since we’ve kidnapped him from his native London. His skin isn’t used to all this Californian sun.

Music Recording Facility (A big space with awesome acoustics and lots of little knobs and stuff)

Musicians (Amazingly talented people to fill that acoustic space with)

Music Mixing Engineer (A tech-savvy person to help the musicians sound their best)

Sound Mixing facilities (A giant room with a projector and loads of buttons that slide up and down)

Sound Mixer (A talented human being to push those knobs and things)

2K Negative Scan (The final step of scanning the picture locked negatives to ready it for VFX and Colour Correction)

Visual FX

Colour Correction

35mm Blow-Up and/or Digital Cinema Package (the final final final exhibition output of the film)

CAST

The Hangman - Reza Safai (Circumstance)

Sophie - Tania Nolan (Spartacus: Blood and Sand)

Chen Wei - Archie Kao (CSI)

Terrence - Kamuela Kim

Liu - Alexander Chen

Fandi - Kamil Haque

Thomas - Jonathan Oldham

Sophie’s Mum - Wendy Wilkins

CREW

Writer / Director: Daniel Grove

Producers: Catherine Aeppel, Adam Lewin and Liz Singh

1st Assistant Director: Michael Koerbel

Director of Photography: Fady Hadid

Production Designer: Christina Brenton

Costume: Brett Kreidberg 

Sound Supervisor: Kari Barber

Script Supervisor: Nicole Rivera

Editors: Gabriel Renfro & Jordan Ledy

Thank you in advance from the Cast & Crew of A Better Place Than This.