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Homerun (film)

2003 Singaporean film directed by Jack Neo

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ4185581 ↗
Source-derived summary

Homerun (Chinese: 跑吧孩子; pinyin: Pǎo bà Hái Zǐ) is a 2003 Singaporean period film and comedy film. A remake of the award-winning Iranian film Children of Heaven, it is a film about two poor siblings and their adventures over a lost pair of shoes. Set in 1965, the year Singapore separated from Malaysia, and satirises the political relations between the two countries, leading to its banning in Malaysia.

The film was written and directed by Singaporean filmmaker Jack Neo, and produced by Mediacorp Raintree Pictures. It stars Shawn Lee, Megan Zheng, Xiang Yun and Huang Wenyong. Filming took place in the rural outskirts of Greater Kuala Lumpur (in Sungai Muntoh village, Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia) during November and December 2002, but post-production delays pushed back the film's release date.

Released in cinemas on 7 August 2003, the film grossed over S$2.3 million during its nine-week box office run. It was nominated for two awards at the 2003 Golden Horse Awards; Zheng, then 10 years old, became the first Singaporean to win a Golden Horse. Generally, however, critical reception of the film was mixed.

Plot

In 1965, two poor Singaporean children, Chew Kiat Kun and his younger sister Chew Seow Fang live with their mother who is late in her third pregnancy and their father who is in debt to a local rice merchant and provision shop owner.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Homerun (film)” is 2003 Singaporean film directed by Jack Neo. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Homerun, film and Singaporean, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 1965, 2002—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2003-08-07. For this dossier, Homerun, film and Singaporean is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2003 Singaporean film directed by Jack Neo” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4185581. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1965 and 2002.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Homerun (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Homerun (film) primary sources, Homerun (film) archive and Homerun research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Homerun (film)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Homerun (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.