Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#69527
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Chew Kin-Wah works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Chew Kin-Wah appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Chew. Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku! is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, drama, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Timo Tjahjanto, Ery Putra, Chew Kin-Wah helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku! (2025) as Koh Acim · The Shadow Strays (2024) as Handler · Semua Akan Baik-Baik Saja (2026) as Pak Bongsai
Career snapshot
Ranked #69527 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
Average Nutevio score
4.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
Most frequent director
Timo Tjahjanto
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Timo Tjahjanto
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 27m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.2
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
6.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Dimsum Martabak, Dukun — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Dimsum Martabak, Dukun.
Most productive era
2020s
12 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 4.71 film | 5.75 films |
| Action | — | 6.02 films |
| Thriller | 7.21 film | 5.93 films |
| Comedy | — | 5.64 films |
| Crime | 7.21 film | 6.93 films |
| Romance | 4.71 film | 0.01 film |
| Horror | 7.21 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018Dimsum Martabak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Koh Ayong.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2025Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
8.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Pak Bongsai.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
14 of 14 films
as Koh Acim
Directed by Unknown
as Handler
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Koh Acim
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku! (2025)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Koh Acim gives Chew Kin-Wah a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Handler
The Shadow Strays (2024)
Performance score7.2
The Shadow Strays asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Handler is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Rain Town
Rain Town (2023)
Performance score7.2
Rain Town asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Pak Bongsai
Semua Akan Baik-Baik Saja (2026)
Performance score7.1
Semua Akan Baik-Baik Saja asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pak Bongsai is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Koh Acim
Start here. Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku! is the clearest statement of what Chew Kin-Wah does — accessible, 119 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Chew at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Dukun (2018)
Same director as Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Rain Town (2023)
Same director as Dukun, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Shadow Strays (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Rain Town — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Semua Akan Baik-Baik Saja (2026)
A deliberate change of key after The Shadow Strays — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Timo Tjahjanto
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Shadow StraysEry Putra
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Soul Mate Ke-2Six degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dimsum Martabak
as Koh Ayong
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Chew Kin-Wah has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dimsum Martabak
as Koh Ayong
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Agak Laen: Menyala Pantiku!
as Koh Acim
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Shadow Strays
as Handler
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Semua Akan Baik-Baik Saja
as Pak Bongsai
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Shadow Strays
as Handler
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Tom Hanks
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Bonnie Hunt
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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