Sini-Ma Festival: The Experience
- Kaili
- Nov 30, 2025
- 3 min read
Our Film and TV journalist, Kaili, fills us in on the wonderful experience that is the Sini-Ma Fest. Also featured: the campus cats.
The Sini-Ma Festival, held on 16th November, was organised by HELP University students from varying departments, bringing a lineup of student films straight to fellow student audiences.
Being mainly student-led, passion and creative energy permeated every detail, from the hand-crafted title cards marking each screening “hall” to the DIY photobooth and playful mascots.
The day started strong with a warm welcome speech and opening ceremony that instantly set the tone. Film festivals thrive on giving new and diverse stories a place to shine, and I think it’s brilliant that Sini-Ma captured that spirit beautifully by bringing together student-made films across universities to expand like-minded audiences. Their keynote highlighted how essential it is to build a community of passionate storytellers, a space where fellow creatives can resonate with each other’s work and spark inspiration in one another.
Ashley, the Project Coordinator of SinimaFest said something that stuck with me,
“Films aren’t a one person job; they involve everyone behind the scenes”.
That line perfectly reflects just how brilliantly the Sini-Ma crew worked together to bring this festival to life. Setting up an event takes just as much dedication as making an indie film, and much like any film crew, the Sini-Ma team deserves full credit for their work. Student-led and community-based projects like this can only be realised through the collective passion of the community itself.
After asking a couple of team members about their favourite part of being involved with Sini-Ma, the answers were short but telling.
“I was surprised, but the teamwork… working together… was something special,” Myuu shared.
“The decorating,” Kash added with zero hesitation.
Moving on to the film screenings, I managed to catch 6 out of the 10 films alongside fellow IGNITE writers, with my personal favourite being Warisan Kasih, a short immersing the viewer with keris battle scenes and heart-warming familial affection between a mother and her daughter. Each film carried with them their own individuality and spark, but a few honourable mentions stood out to me: “A Script By…”, an experimental short film depicting creative burnout, and “The Goodbye”, a cartoonish film of bidding a friend farewell in a simple yet comedic flair.
As the event drew to a close, “Pitch It!” kicked off with a roundtable-style challenge where participants had to improvise short film pitches on the spot, all centred on the theme of “Inspiration”. I was seated with students from other universities, including HELP University and Taylor’s University. After a quick icebreaker, we started bouncing ideas off each other, laughing at the twists and turns of our brainstorming, and witnessing creativity take shape in real time. Even with only a few minutes, every pitch carried a spark of originality and passion. The energy in the room was infectious; it felt less like a competition and more like a shared celebration of imagination. And as a fun little perk, the winning team walked away with free tickets to Pusat Sains Negara.
My final thoughts on the event come down to this: it holds so much potential. The event organisers put in a lot of work to make it happen, so I hope for more people to turn up if Sini-Ma chooses to open their curtains again. It’s cool to love things, and in this case, it’s films!
Oh, and of course, the campus cats were the cutest bonus to the whole experience.
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