Queer as Punk: powerful music doc takes viewers on the road with a radical Malaysian punk band

The name of the self-proclaimed “75 per cent queer” Malaysian band Shh…Diam! translates as ‘Shut up!’, an order they refuse. They sing and strum about their lives, loves and community loudly and proudly at shows across the world. Their home country of Malaysia has criminalised LGBTQ+ identities through widespread conversion practices and state-sponsored violence. The band stands visible and defiant against this discrimination.

In this second feature from Malaysian documentarian Yihwen Chen (who directed the 2019 doc about blind Malaysian footballers Eye on the Ball), we meet Shh… Diam! first at a show, then at a march. The band’s transmasculine, witty frontman Faris is a charming screen presence, aware of us as an extra audience for his punchlines but natural and unaffected in front of the camera; his bandmates Yon and Yoyo are similarly sharp. In fact, Shh… Diam!’s members are so charismatic that they lend the first half of Chen’s film a near-mockumentary feel. A queer hang-out film that drifts comfortably from scene to scene, it proves a useful context for probing the struggles faced by queer Malaysians. Faris loves a white woman who cannot settle in Malaysia with him. The government acknowledges only the identity listed on the compulsory identity card – which is unchangeable – and does not recognise same-sex partnerships. Yoyo marries her partner overseas.

Chen’s film charts the lives of this trio from 2018 to 2022, spanning a pivotal election cycle in Malaysia’s recent history. Much mention is made of a “pink migration” sparked by the impossibility of Malaysian queer lives thriving under the country’s harshly discriminatory laws. The film and its subjects present various pushes against those boundaries. Faris, Yon and Yoyo forge on with their lives – alone and together – in kitchens, in cars, in bedrooms and at shows. Their sparky, tongue-in-cheek tunes (with titles such as ‘Horny and Broke’ and ‘Lonely Lesbian’) are enthusiastically received by audiences in Malaysia, England and Northern Ireland.

But freedom overseas sharpens awareness of the struggle back home. In one particularly shocking case, a lesbian couple are subjected to caning in the sharia high court of the state of Terengganu. The group stages a performance examining this incident, producing the film’s most indelible image – at the intermission; they stand in near-silence processing, crying, hugging each other. Their audience follows suit. Queer as Punk captures the complexity of a locally specific queer experience and renders its urgency universal.

► Queer as Punk is in UK cinemas 15 May.