The Toronto Film Festival premiere this week puts K-pop singer Shuhua before an international festival audience and hands her new film immediate traction with buyers, as global sales are already in play. First-look footage of Shuhua in Happily Ever After has been released ahead of the festival, marking the singer’s on-screen debut outside her work with the girl group I-dle.
Shuhua, described in credits as a Korea-based Taiwanese singer, shares the screen with Xuan Chen, known for I, Myself. The film is the second feature from Taiwanese writer-director Feng-i Fiona Roan and is produced by Taiwanese company Splash Pictures. Hong Kong-based sales agent Moebius Entertainment is handling international sales rights, excluding Taiwan, positioning the film for distribution conversations at Toronto.
Happily Ever After follows two sisters whose personalities diverge as a stray cat turns up in their lives. Deadline published the film’s full synopsis, which centres on 29-year-old Kitty Lin, whose life shifts after her boyfriend, Ledo, unexpectedly proposes. Kitty interprets marriage as love, stability and the life she has pictured, and she takes in an abandoned orange cat as wedding plans gather pace.
Her older sister, Claire, is presented as an independent writer who lives with their parents and keeps a longtime relationship with her girlfriend secret from their conservative mother. Claire doubts Kitty’s engagement and grows frustrated by what she views as compromise, while Kitty resents Claire’s judgment and the contradictions behind Claire’s independence. Those family dynamics form the emotional core that the film will present to festival audiences and potential international buyers.
The combination of Shuhua’s pop profile and the film’s festival launch gives Happily Ever After a clear pathway to foreign markets, with Moebius managing rights outside Taiwan. The Toronto screenings this week will be the film’s public introduction and the next step in securing distribution beyond its domestic backing.
