SingaporeConnect brings Annette Lee’s Dream Stall to three West Coast cities

SingaporeConnect is taking Annette Lee’s feature debut Dream Stall to Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Seattle area on Nov. 14-16, 2026, with Lee joining each screening for audience Q&As. The San Francisco stop adds a SingaporeConnect mixer focused on food, arts and entrepreneurship, underscoring a push by Singapore’s diaspora to build U.S. audiences for Southeast Asian stories.

Why it matters: - SingaporeConnect is using the Bay Area Singaporean diaspora to help launch a Singapore feature film in the U.S. market. - The tour ties film, food and entrepreneurship together, aiming to widen the audience for Southeast Asian storytelling. - Organizers say the project is also a bridge between Singapore’s tech community and its creative sector abroad.

What happened: - SingaporeConnect will bring Dream Stall to three West Coast cities from Nov. 14-16, 2026. - The tour opens in Los Angeles’ NoHo Arts District on Saturday, Nov. 14. - The tour moves to San Francisco’s Japantown Cultural District on Sunday, Nov. 15. - The tour closes in the greater Seattle area on Monday, Nov. 16. - Annette Lee, the film’s director and lead actress, will join every screening for a post-show Q&A. - Eight Parables is presenting the tour, and SingaporeConnect is co-hosting. - The tour supports “Spice & Story” by Kampong Collective, a Southeast Asian 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on cultural connection across generations.

The details: - Dream Stall is an English- and Mandarin-language feature set in Singapore. - The story follows a prodigal daughter who saves her family’s hawker stall against her father’s wishes while confronting grief, glamour and the pull of social-media fame. - The film is Annette Lee’s directorial debut. - The tour follows the film’s theatrical release in Singapore and Malaysia. - Lee is also known as a Singaporean singer-songwriter, filmmaker, comedian and digital creator. - The announcement frames Dream Stall as part of a broader wave of digital creators moving into feature filmmaking. - Mark Sin, SingaporeConnect president and a former Apple hardware engineering lead, said Singapore’s technology diaspora is backing Singapore’s storytellers. - Sin said the group wants to help build global audiences for Singapore and Southeast Asian films. - Sin also pointed to last year’s first Singapore Festival in North America, which drew 3,300 attendees, most of them not Singaporean. - Yik Lin Khoo, a Singapore-based enterprise strategist with a background in tech and national ICT policy, said he wanted to present an updated view of Singapore to global audiences. - Khoo said he reached out to Annette Lee because he saw her debut feature as a fit for that goal. - Mark Sin and Yik Lin Khoo previously co-founded the Singapore Students’ Association at Carnegie Mellon. - Supporting Dream Stall is the first joint arts project for the two longtime friends. - Jan Lin Lee, executive producer at Eight Parables, said the film reflects Singapore’s “kampong spirit,” or village-like community kinship. - Jan Lin Lee said the tour is meant to speak to a world dealing with increasing isolation and to elevate authentic Southeast Asian stories. - Jan Lin Lee also said Dream Stall offers a pilot for a feature-film tour at a moment when AI is disrupting film and digital-native filmmakers are reshaping the industry.

Between the lines: - The tour is being positioned as more than a film screening run; it is also a statement about diaspora-led cultural infrastructure. - The emphasis on hawker culture, community kinship and food entrepreneurship suggests the organizers want the film to represent Singapore beyond the polished global image often associated with the country. - The project also shows how Bay Area tech networks are increasingly funding creative ventures tied to identity and heritage.

What’s next: - SingaporeConnect is offering pre-registration at singaporeconnect.org/dream-stall. - Pre-registrants will get priority to buy tickets when sales open. - Organizers expect demand to exceed capacity. - The San Francisco event will include a separate Arts & Entrepreneurship Mixer after the screening. - The mixer will feature a Bak Kut Teh pop-up by Dabao Singapore, a conversation with Annette Lee and Dabao founder Emily Lim, and hosting by Bay Area content creator Joanna Hope Lai. - The mixer will be sold separately, with a bundle option for screening plus mixer tickets. - Emily Lim said the Bak Kut Teh service is meant as a welcome to the table and a nod to the film’s hawker-stall themes.

The bottom line: - SingaporeConnect is trying to turn a regional film release into a diaspora-powered cultural event, with Annette Lee’s debut feature as the center of the effort.