06/06/2025

FRIDAY | JUNE 6, 2025

25

LYFE

What it means to grow up L OCAL independent filmmaker Joey Lee makes her debut with My Parents’ Midlife Crisis , selected brother Lyon Lee’s self-training cycling journey. The film questions traditional family roles while finding humour and hope in life’s struggles. o Malaysian indie filmmaker explores chaos of adulthood in My Parents’ Midlife Crisis

for the prestigious Shanghai International Film Festival WIP Project. The film presents a refreshingly tender and humourous lens into the chaos of adulthood – seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl caught between her conservative father and her mother’s surprising pursuit of freedom. Co-written with her 14-year-old daughter Coxanne Kok, the story was crafted from Joey Lee’s personal journey through divorce, parenting and inspired by her

“With humour, irony and heart, we wanted to explore what it means to grow up – whether as a child or an adult. Through the lens of a daughter, this story questions traditional roles and finds hope in the messiness of life,” said Joey. “I particularly like the scene where she writes to her daughter and husband. It makes me cry. I like working with her. Sometimes, I do not really think she is my mum. Maybe it is a good form of healing for us and others,” said Kok.

My Parents’ Midlife Crisis has been selected for the prestigious Shanghai International Film Festival WIP Project. Lee’s debut earned the Special Mention Award from the Busan Asian Film School in 2022. It received grants from Finas and the ARRI International Support Fund for first-time directors. Her previous works include the award-winning short films Borih, The Paddy Priestess and Dancing Paddy , which have screened at the Nepal International Film Festival, Cambodia International Film Festival, SeaShorts and more. Her indigenous river documentary When the River Flows was selected for the Docs by the Sea Producing Lab – an international documentary forum and lab based in Bali, Indonesia, specifically focused on supporting and developing creative documentary projects from Asia. My Parents’ Midlife Crisis is a family tale – funny, raw and deeply human – about how love changes, how families adapt and how sometimes, it is the children who grow up first. Because she “adapted quickly” to stunt work, Lezito decided to go professional, appearing in several major movies, including Inferno, Millennium and The Batman with Zoe Kravitz. “I met all the actresses I have She has had her moments on some of the movies, although she insisted she has never felt fear on those she does“at home”for social media. “I had to ride through flames for Bad Girl , a film which was never released. On paper, it was very simple, but I did not have a helmet,” she recalled. And in the summer of 2023 while filming David Fincher’s The Killer in Paris, starring Michael Fassbender, Lezito had a severe fall. “I flew off the motorcycle, I was not going very fast, but fast enough to land on my head and the helmet cracked.” She ended up in the emergency room with a head injury. doubled for,” she said. 30 million followers

The film is a collaborative effort between Joey (left) and Kok.

The film explores the many intricacies of familial relationships.

Jojo Goh plays Sandra, the mother.

Douglas Lim plays David, the father.

French stuntwoman putting fizz into Hollywood WHEN Sarah Lezito began messing around with motorbikes at 13 she never dreamed one day she would become the stunt double of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. her winemaking studies to fly to South Korea to perform Johansson’s stunts in the movie.

“People think I am working, but it mostly allows me to release all the pressure,” said Lezito, whose lucky charm – a plastic beaded bracelet – is wrapped around the throttle of her bike. Doing wheelies in field Now popularly known as the “world stunt champion” (although there is no recognised world championship), she began her acrobatics career young on the family holding near Epernay. “I fell into stunts by watching videos. No one in my family was in the motor sports world. “My father only had an agricultural quad, not at all made for sports – but, I started trying to do wheelies with it in a field,” she said. Then she began posting her stunt videos on YouTube. But she seemed destined to follow her family into wine and viticulture until she posted a video of a medley of tricks one day in March 2013 called One out of Billion Girls . “It was thanks to this video that they noticed me,” she said. The “they” being the team from the Hollywood blockbuster Avengers 2 . A few months later, she abandoned

Her garage doubles as a studio, with her YouTube trophies and gifts from her fans displayed on the walls. But, it is also where she gets her hands dirty repairing her fleet of roughly 10 motorcycles. “As long as I enjoy sitting on the motorcycle, I will keep doing this,” she said.

It“made her think”, she said, and she “decided to take a break” and put her Hollywood career on hold. Lezito now devotes herself to her social media channels, posting videos of her stunts to her more than 30 million followers, including 9.5 million on Instagram, some two million more than MotoGP star Marc Marquez.

The French winemaker’s daughter has stood in for Scarlett Johansson twice on Avengers 2 and Black Widow and appeared in a dozen films including The Batman . The 32-year-old is one of a rare breed of motorcycle stuntwomen, with a massive social media following that helped bring her from the vineyards of France’s Champagne region to Hollywood. AFP caught up with her on her own personal training track amid the otherwise tranquil vineyards near Epernay, the Champagne capital in northeast France. Barely astride her red chrome Kawasaki, she was off down the track performing stunts with disconcerting dexterity, her long brown hair trailing out of her helmet in the wind. “This is kind of my temple,” she said after performing a series of gravity defying tricks including standing with both feet on top of her 200kg machine and then flipping herself onto the handlebars.

Lezito keeps herself busy maintaining a fleet of 10 motorcycles in her garage. – AFPPIC