We Are All Strangers (2026) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for good-looking Hawker Market food
Take a Drink: whenever someone else does (or talks about it)
Do a Shot: whenever someone drinks to excess
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
Anthony Chen has built a reputation as a master of family drama set in his home country of Singapore. Ilo Ilo was one of my favorite movies of 2013- as auspicious a debut as they come.
We Are All Strangers caps his “Growing Up” Trilogy, centering on the young son of a hawker market cook and the wealthier young woman he falls for, as well as their respective families, as they make those last steps from youth to the harsh daylight of adulthood.
A Toast
Chen puts Singapore’s dynamic mix of cultures, languages, and cuisines on display, but this is no tourism video- this is just life there, rendered with an apt eye, like in the air-conditioned bus date that gives us a tour of the town as well as an insight into the two characters on it. This is just one example of his grasp of lived-in family dynamics; it’s easy to see the love between all of these characters, both new and long present, as well as the frictions. He knows marriage is where a story begins, not ends.
There are weddings, births, illnesses, fights, and financial matters always on the mind, but Chen just as often focuses on the small moments, slights of the unsaid, curdling disappointments, but also small joys and the little bits of out of nowhere romance that keep us devoted to our partners. This produces some really, truly beautiful moments in this film.
Those economic hardships, and the jobs and markets that arise to tempt and take advantage of those suffering them, make this as much a cautionary tale as a hopeful one, though. The people aren’t impoverished, but they’re operating without a safety net, which means any setback becomes a compounding one. Many people not just in relatively well-off Singapore, but everywhere- perhaps even the majority, live on such an economic knife’s edge. But live, they do.
Beer Two
Sometimes you just want to grab these characters by the shoulders and shake them for the choices they make or the things they say to each other. That’s, of course, hardly unrealistic – what family doesn’t have many of these moments.
Verdict
We Are All Strangers is a perceptive film about how that may be true, but that human connection is essential nonetheless.
