The Fox King, Woo Ming Jin's twin-brothers film that premiered at Toronto, opens in Malaysia on 17 September

A year after it filled a house at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Fox King comes home. Woo Ming Jin's Malaysia-Indonesia film is listed on this site for Thursday 17 September at TGV, the day after Malaysia Day, and TGV's own page gives it 94 minutes, in Malay, with the classification still to be announced. It opens the same day as Terbang, which makes 17 September a Thursday with two Malaysian films arriving at once.

Twins, a telepathic bond, and a teacher

The story, as Woo described it to the New Straits Times in July 2024, follows fraternal twins with a telepathic bond who are forced to fend for themselves when their father remarries a younger wife and abandons them; the arrival of a new teacher, Lara, puts the brothers' bond to the test. Malay Mail's report from the Toronto premiere names them: Ali is played by Idan Aedan and Amir by newcomer Hadi Putra, the father by Amerul Affendi, and Lara by Dian Sastrowardoyo, the Indonesian star of Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? and, more recently, the Netflix series Gadis Kretek, as the NST notes. Chew Kin Wah is also in the cast. Woo told the NST the film is about the stages every teenager goes through, "first love, sibling rivalry, bullying and grief", and that he wanted a story of growing up that was cinematically exciting and authentic.

Toronto, then Busan

Malay Mail reported on 12 September 2025 that the film had its world premiere in TIFF's Centrepiece programme, the festival's fiftieth edition, to full-house screenings. Woo said in the press release the paper quotes: "We had a fantastic premiere of The Fox King at TIFF 50", adding that the moment meant more because his twin brother lives in the city. Dian recalled deciding to join within a day of reading the script, which she said made her cry, and Idan, watching the finished film for the first time with the Toronto audience, called it a beautiful piece by Woo. From Toronto it went to its Asian premiere at the Busan International Film Festival on 20 September 2025, Malay Mail reports, before cinemas in Malaysia and Indonesia. Berita Harian, interviewing Idan, then 21, before he flew out, quotes him hoping the film would also be shown in Malaysia; a year on, it will be.

Who made it, and who paid

The film is a co-production between Malaysia and Indonesia, backed by Greenlight Pictures, KawanKawan Media, Da Huang Pictures and SunStrong Entertainment, with support from Finas and the Ministry of Communications, according to Malay Mail. Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching, quoted by Bernama in Malay Mail in August 2025, gave the public money's figures: RM1 million from Finas's 2023 Creative Content Fund and RM50,000 from its 2025 International Participation and Promotion Fund. The NST adds that Woo, who won the International Critics Prize at Locarno in 2022, made the film as the first collaboration between his Greenlight Pictures and SunStrong Entertainment, whose founder Jment Lim is executive producer, and that the script won the Mocha Chai Award at the QCinema Project Market in the Philippines in November 2023 after a stop at the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market. Woo's stated aim, in the NST interview, was a film that travels both ways: Indonesian films reach Malaysia, he said, but Malaysian films are rarely seen in Indonesia.

Utusan Malaysia, in August 2025, has the working method from Idan's side: before every scene he and Dian sat together to work out its dynamics, which he says made him more confident on location, and he recalls the shoot as April of the previous year.

When the sessions appear

Only TGV has announced the film so far; the other chains may add it, and the listings here will show them when they do. Sessions usually appear about a week before opening, so the first should be visible by the weekend of 12 September. The Fox King page carries the date and the chain for now and will fill with every cinema and session as they are published; the Terbang page does the same for the other local film opening that Thursday.