Where The City Listens

The film unfolds in the shadows of Kuala Lumpur’s newest financial district, as glass towers rise and everyday voices fall into silence. It turns its gaze downward to ordinary conversations where political life quietly persists. Blending documentary filmmaking with speculative architecture, the work imagines civic spaces not as monuments of authority but as listening devices. Truth emerges through fragments of lived experience, overheard speech, and collective memory rather than official statements. Moving between observation and intervention, the film blurs the roles of filmmaker, citizen, and architect. It asks what it means to build transparency in a place shaped by economic inequality and political erasure.

A film by Ivy Tee Wei Li Director / Filmmaker / Architectural Research Ivy Tee Wei Li Editing Ivy Tee Wei Li Archival Footage Courtesy of CNA (Channel NewsAsia)

Special thanks to Patrick Macasaet for his guidance and support throughout the project. Thank you to my major project peers for their conversations, critiques, and solidarity. With gratitude to Chong Yan Chuah for the enduring inspiration and influence on how I see architecture, film, and civic imagination.