HKAFF 2022 Festival Programme Booklet

FOREWORD

“We are never sad enough to make the world better,” said the writer Elias Canetti. If melancholy doesn’t work, why not try the other extreme — what if we try to fight madness with madness, in the crazy times we are living in? How does cinema, this fantastic realm in which reality and fiction bleed into each other, fit into this approach towards life?

Now into its 19th edition, the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival aims to salute those who dare to demand the impossible, dreamers who persist with their principles or utopian visions of what society could be like: we are proud to present filmmakers both real (Ebrabim Golestan, Jean-Luc Godard, Jafar Panahi) and fictional (Lee Jung-eun as a time-travelling director) striving to sustain truth at 24 frames per second, to protagonists ranging from hearing-impaired boxers, self-immolating trade unionists and treasure-hunting Cambodian children.

The flipside of such courage is a trip into the darkness, with avengers who would go to fanatical extremes to right the wrongs of the past. We have small-scale dramas revolving around slighted migrant workers in an Indian factory, and surreal revenge tales set in a mythical Malaysian island; from an Iranian journalist’s solo, perilous struggle against a state-backed serial killer, to the latest of Philippine auteur Lav Diaz’s political allegories featuring traumatised anti-heroes.

Meanwhile, some filmmakers also manage to tease the most scintillating of laughs and tears from what appears to be merely mundane human bonds. Koji Fukada, Hong Sang-soo and Anthony Chen — this time as a producer — bring about relationships and romances of all shapes and sizes designed as all-out attacks on our hearts as much as our minds.

We will also celebrate the Kurdish filmmakers striving to present their past, present and future through a wide variety of cinematic forms; the Taiwanese documentary-maker Huang Hsin-yao and his early-career documentaries about the nature and culture which shaped his award-winning fictional features; and the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival, the breeding ground from which many a budding Philippine cineaste emerged into the limelight.

We hope this fantastic feast of wildly different cinematic beasts — akin to the creatures adorning our festival booklet this year — will help make this world a more exciting, if not better, world to live in.

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Official

香港 Hong Kong / 2022 /

Edan Lui, member of Hong Kong pop sensation Mirror, takes on his most challenging role yet in this powerful and unsentimental family drama. Based on the story of director Tsang Hing Weng Eric’s own family, Tsang’s directorial debut follows a family in a Hakka-walled village eight years after a combative winter solstice dinner tore the family apart. When a cousin returns home and seeks to reunite the family for another dinner, they must rethink their connection. In addition to his fellow Mirror member Anson Lo, Lui is also supported by a cast of both masterful veteran actors and talented up-and-coming stars.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, honest cleaning service owner Chak hits tough times as a terrible economy and a dearth of supplies threatens his business. In need of an assistant, he hires Candy, a young single mother with a penchant for stealing. The two slowly forge a bond, but the cruel realities of the pandemic loom on the horizon. Painfully timely but also tender in parts, Lam Sum’s film is a poignant portrait of what happens when modern poverty is further exacerbated by an unprecedented calamity. It’s a remarkably assured directorial effort enhanced by moving performances.

Radiant neon signs once served as icons of Hong Kong’s prosperity and vitality. However, such signs have gradually disappeared over the years, along with the craftsmen who spent decades mastering the craft of blowing neon lights. Director Anastasia Tsang revives this long-time tradition in her poignant directorial debut, telling the touching story of a widow (Sylvia Chang) who discovers secrets her late husband Bill (Simon Yam) buried within his neon lights workshop. While reminiscing about Bill, she sets out to fulfill his final wish of recreating a famous demolished neon sign with the help of Bill’s young protégé (Henick Chow).

For his project under the lauded First Feature Film Initiative programme, director Ka Singfung tells the heartrending journey of a woman whose life is forever changed by the children she takes in as a temporary foster carer. In a career-best performance, Sammi Cheng stars as Mei, a woman trying to get over the death of her young son through the children she welcomes into her home. Each ward offers Mei a different challenge and a newfound appreciation for the difficulties of motherhood, but when her dedication to the job causes her marriage to turn sour, Mei is forced to make a choice.

Cheuk-to is a film critic and M+ Curator of Hong Kong Film and Media. He was the founding president of Hong Kong Film Critics Society and the former Artistic Director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society. His writing on film were published in eight volumes between 1990 and 2000.

Hazel is a stage, film and TV actress who took up Theatre Arts from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and a regular collaborator of filmmaker Lav Diaz. Her recent works with the filmmaker are A Tale of Filipino Violence and When The Waves Are Gone. She currently appeared in a Philippine TV series titled Flower of Evil, an adaptation of a Korean drama of the same title.

黃若瑩 Rita Wong

A Macao native who has worked in film curation and art administration for over a decade. She used to be the Programming and Marketing Manager of the Macau Cultural Centre and COO of Cinematheque Passion. She is currently the committee member of the Association Audio-Visual CUT. Over the years, she has devoted to organising film festivals to cultivate film appreciation culture for locals, such as the annually-held "Macao Films & Videos Panorama”, a film festival that aims to promote local films.

一貫的泰式幽默，暖心之餘卻又一針見血，本片聚焦校園權威 統治和學生對此的反抗。電影圍繞獲得數學奧林匹克比賽金牌 的學生展開:這位老師眼中的模範生，不慎被捲入了作弊的醜聞 中。原本滿心期望能順利解決，不料事情發展卻顛覆了他的 價 值觀。電影回應了 2020 年泰國學生在社交媒體上發起的 「壞 學生」運動:學生們提出了一連串對社會的質疑，包括泰國 君主制度、憲法問題等，卻始終秉持著一個原則:提出的問題需 與學校息息相關，且只為推動民主。構思到製作歷時八年，更一 度因為疫情緣故受影響，卻不減當中對社會、教育問題的尖銳 詰問。

The debut feature from director Sorayos Prapapan openly satirises Thailand’s education system and its authoritarian policies while also slyly referencing the country’s real-life “Bad Student” protest movement. Young math whiz Arnold seems very much the model student, enjoying an ideal high school life in all its cheery banality. Arnold’s ennui leads him to fall in with an exam cheating scheme, while greater student discontent bubbles to the surface around him — and eventually bursts. Showing a steady hand despite his “first feature” status, Sorayos adeptly balances an irreverent tone with urgent social concerns, and uses real protest footage to seamlessly lift his fictionalised satire into something significantly more.

Dirty Difficult

Star-crossed lovers Ahmed and Mehdia couldn’t be more different he’s a Syrian refugee selling scrap metal for a living while she’s an Ethiopian domestic worker employed by eccentrics and they struggle to find time for the briefest embrace. Both are caged and both desire escape from their lives in modern-day Beirut. Yet when they finally grasp the chance to flee and start over, Ahmed’s mysterious disease worsens: his body, already expelling iron and rust, is slowly and irreversibly turning into metal. French-Lebanese filmmaker Wissam Charaf draws inspiration from real-life suffering and social problems, molding his themes into an allegorical fairy tale that’s fresh, unexpected and utterly cinematic.

Sensitive 12-year-old Myung-eun (Moon Seung-a) is embarrassed of her working-class family and constantly lies to keep her true family situation a secret. When she writes, though, she is not constrained by reality. Pouring herself into essays, Myung-eun takes pride in constructing a different world of her own. However, the candid writings of a new student shake her sense of self, and prompt Myung-eun to better understand her family. Reminiscent of acclaimed coming-of-age Korean indies like The World of Us and House of Hummingbird , writer-director Lee Ji-eun’s understated debut feature excels in its perceptive depiction of the emotions and experiences of a child trying to find her place in the world.

Kim Quy Bui’s fascination with death informs the haunting Memoryland, and the director even faced her own mortality during the film’s post-production. Bui was diagnosed with lung cancer and unnervingly prepared for her own (thankfully unnecessary) burial while finishing the film. Separated by time and location, the three stories of Memoryland share themes of death and burial, following characters who die, leaving loved ones to contend with their departures. Sometimes the loved ones despair, leading to further death and sorrow. Ultimately, Bui’s stories and characters reveal themselves to be intricately linked by a web of traditions both followed and disobeyed, with change the only constant.

「你從哪裡來？」、「我們可以留在日本嗎？」、「我不可以進入東京 範圍」這些平常日本人根本不會想的事情，卻成為了主角一家 日常的無奈。在日庫爾德人問題一直備受關注。夾縫中的身份、 祖國歷史問題......都讓他們難以開口向身邊人解釋他們的力不 從心。Sarya 本來尚算安穩的生活，卻因難民庇護請求遭拒絕而 突然結束，陷入進退兩難的境地。與此同時，一場⻘澀的愛戀已 悄然發芽，她忐忑的心情轉化成炙熱請求：我只想在日本過 平 凡的生活！初次自編自導便入選柏林影展，更在多個國際電 影節上大放異采，川和田惠真透過細緻入微的鏡頭讓觀眾了解 在日難民的困境與不確定的未來。

Among the G7 nations, Japan accepts the fewest number of refugees. Many displaced people live under restrictions, waiting years for the government to decide their fate. This is the vulnerable situation facing Sarya, the 17-year Kurdish heroine of this empathetic feature directorial debut by Emma Kawawada, a member of Hirokazu Koreeda’s production company. Fleeing to Japan as a small child with her parents, Sarya has only known Japan as her home even though her appearance makes her an outsider. When her father’s asylum application is denied, the normal teenage life she desperately wants moves increasingly out of reach, her tribulations brought vividly to the screen through Kurdish-Japanese model-turned-actor Lina Arashi.

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When the Burmese military staged a coup in February 2021, it sparked protests and civil disobedience across the country. Putting their freedom and lives on the line, ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers created short films that combine terrifying citizen journalists’ footage of the junta’s violent suppression with striking fictional images that creatively express the emotional state of the Burmese people. Compiled and edited together by another team of anonymous filmmakers in Europe, this urgent piece of activist cinema epitomises the importance of global collaboration in raising awareness for a crisis that has been forgotten by the world.

On paper, the story of boxer Keiko Ogasawara has the makings of a rousing commercial blockbuster, but director Sho Miyake’s semi-fictional adaptation of her remarkable autobiography is instead a delicate and quietly moving character study about a fighter who has to overcome her internal struggles to keep on fighting. Despite battling lifelong deafness, Keiko (Yukino Kishii, in an amazing performance) has managed to turn pro and obtain a winning record. But as her mentor faces health issues and her gym faces imminent closure due to the pandemic, Keiko finds her will to keep fighting starting to wane.

Despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government, Jafar Panahi managed to make five films that playfully critiqued authority while examining the art of filmmaking. Completed just before his recent incarceration, Panahi’s latest film once again stars Panahi as a fictional version of himself. While remotely directing a film from a small border village, he gets caught in a local scandal when village elders demand that he surrender photographic evidence of a forbidden relationship. A bold and very tongue-in-cheek meta-commentary on being trapped in his homeland, Panahi’s film has been made even more poignant by his current circumstance.

This film began with a simple idea by director Mitra Farahani: To bring together notoriously reclusive filmmaking legends Jean-Luc Godard and Ebrahim Golestan, who are both of similar age but had never met. When a physical meeting proved impossible, Farahani improvised a solution for them. For eight months, the two men traded e-mails every Friday like clockwork, sharing their views on both art and their own mortality with plenty of intelligence and humour. Little did Farahani know that her insightful documentary on these two great artistic icons would be one of Godard’s final film appearances before his death.

Born in South Korea and raised in France by French foster parents, 25-year-old Freddie gets a chance to visit her motherland when she is rerouted by a typhoon. Stepping on Korean soil for the first time as an adult with little knowledge of her native language and culture, Freddie begins an unpredictable journey in search of her biological parents. In his follow-up to the acclaimed Diamond Island, Cambodian-French director Davy Chou drew from the experiences of other Korean adoptees to craft this engrossing voyage of a restless wanderer in search of the roots she left behind.

Cambodia’s first-ever science fiction feature is an imaginative and surprising ride. Cambodia-based US writer-director Jake Wachtel’s inventive genre combination promises something for everyone, from its precocious child protagonists and Inception-like dream exploration technology, to its earnest look at Buddhist themes and intriguing glimpse of a near-future Phnom Penh. The story unfolds as a mystery pursued by children Srey Leak and Leng Heng, whose search for a supposed treasure leads them on a journey into karma, reincarnation and questions of spirituality and enlightenment. But above its lofty, metaphysical ideas and its layered look at Cambodian life, this is a grand and entertaining adventure with universal themes like friendship and community at heart.

Writer-director Shin Su-won pays homage to female filmmakers who came before her in a tender, haunting ode to Korean cinema’s past and future. Middle-aged director Ji-wan (Lee Jung-eun from Parasite) is in a rut after her third film bombs at the box office. At home, she also gets no support from her husband and son. She joins a project to restore pioneering female director Hong Eun-won’s 1962 film A Woman Judge. While tracing Hong’s footsteps, Ji-wan realises that, though half a century apart, their struggles as woman directors in Korean society are eerily similar. Unfolding as a mystery-like journey of self-exploration, this elegiac drama is a bittersweet love letter to the beautiful, fading world of cinema.

A giant movie palace that became an endangered species in the age of the multiplex, the Scala cinema was the final single-screen cinema left standing in Bangkok. However, the cinema was demolished in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic caused it to close down permanently. The daughter of a former employee, Ananta Thitanat drew on her familiarity and nostalgia for her childhood haunt in this quietly moving obituary, documenting the space itself in its last days. As a former employee says in resignation, “Times change,” but that is exactly why documents of vanished heritage like this film are more important than ever.

In 1970, sewing worker Chun Tae-il lit a spark that changed the workers’ rights movement in South Korea forever. Over two decades after his story was told in the 1995 award-winning film A Single Spark, director Hong Jun-pyo brings Chun’s tragic but rousing story to animation for a new generation of audiences. While Hong’s version of the story doesn’t shy away from the inhumane working conditions in Seoul’s Peace Market that drove Chun to become a labour activist, it also portrays Chun as more than a heroic martyr by showing him in happier times as an ordinary young man with aspirations.

In 1970s Korea, opposition party politician Kim Woon-bum seeks to run for president, but after losing six local elections in a row, his chances are slim to none. This is where Seo Chang-dae comes in. An ambitious election strategist, Seo lays out an aggressive — even bordering on dishonest — approach that wins Kim much-needed support, but the two men clash over the ethics of their methods. A fictional take on a miraculous campaign that nearly succeeded in ending Park Chung-hee’s controversial regime, Byun Sung-hyun’s ambitious and wildly entertaining political drama takes lessons from history to create an important cautionary tale about the present.

金馬獎最佳剪輯的高鳴晟操刀，呈現集體追夢中的渴望與迷失。

In 2018, an artistic community dubbed the “120 Grassroots Self-Autonomous Zone” sprouted in Taipei’s Huashan Grassland. The settlement, established by 23-year-old Jhuang Yi-fan and the art collective Unregulated Masses, was meant to be an experimental space for artists to freely gather and create. However, a grisly murder and dismemberment case in the Grassland shut down the settlement for good, and turned public opinion against the artists. Director Hsieh Sheng-hung started out documenting an idealistic project by alternative artists seeking a different way of life. With the shocking turn of events, he ended up intimately capturing the rise and fall of a utopia, and the growth and loss of a group of young people.

Following the award-winning kids drama Hang in There Kids! (13th), director Laha Mebow once again shines a spotlight on her Atayal heritage with her latest film. This charming domestic dramedy explores the “gaga” belief system of the Atayal people and how it affects three generations of one Atayal family. The film starts with the granddaughter returning home after working abroad for two years. Her return sparks several events that will change the family, with one family member deciding to run for village chief and the matriarch dreaming that the family is about to welcome a new life.

Arzu is a pauper who lives in a small town ruled over by a crime boss. When his wife is killed for exposing the town’s crimes to the police, Arzu is offered a chance to prove his loyalty by being the boss’ right-hand man. Will Arzu bend for survival or stand up for justice? Director Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Yellow Cat [18th]) uses neo-western archetypes to expose the ways of despots in authoritarian countries. This film may be a David-versus-Goliath tale, but what happens when David believes that freedom is impractical in the face of a Goliath that is too big to fall?

Following his Oscar-nominated fantasy Border, Denmark-based Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi takes an unflinching look at the misogyny and twisted sense of justice that plague his homeland with this serial killer procedural thriller. A fictional account of true events that occurred in the holy city of Mashhad, the film follows a working man who murders prostitutes in the name of “cleansing” the city, and a crusading female journalist (Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Amir Ebrahimi) who tries to uncover his identity. Even more chilling than the film’s graphic murder scenes is the public’s subsequent response to the brutal murders.

Kido realises that he and his subject share eerie similarities. A riveting slow-burn mystery about the slippery nature of identity, A Man is both a compelling mystery and an intelligent meditation on existence.

Filipino auteur Lav Diaz’s second film of 2022 draws on the likes of The Count of Monte Cristo and Agatha Christie to tell a captivating story of revenge. Set during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody and highly controversial “war on drugs”, the story follows Primo, a former police officer who served ten years in jail. Upon release, Primo immediately becomes obsessed with revenge against his former colleague and master investigator Hermes for his role in locking Primo up. Diaz’s incisive critique of Duterte’s brutal reign is a bleak but enthralling slow-burn tale of two powerful forces on a steady and inevitable collision course.

Prolific Filipino auteur

Diaz adapts Richard Lee’s short story and screenplay into an epic “film-novel” about the legacy of Spanish colonialism and power struggles of the past echoing in the present. Set in 1970’s Philippines, just after dictator Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law, the film stars John Lloyd Cruz as Servando Monzon III, the heir of a feudal family who is caught between his family’s violent past and the violent future that will come with the Marcos regime. Completed just as Marcos’ son was inaugurated as the Philippines’ new president, Diaz’s film is also a haunting cautionary tale of what may come.

Who watches the watchmen? This eternal conundrum is once again put to the test in this morally complex hard-boiled police thriller. Choi Woo-sik (Parasite) stars as Min-jae, a rookie police officer who is rigorously by-the-book. This very quality makes him the perfect candidate to investigate Gang-yoon (Jo Jin-woong), a decorated officer who believes that, when it comes to policing, the end justifies the means. Embedded in Gang-yoon’s team as a mole, Min-jae begins to question his own loyalties after seeing Gang-yoon in action. An intense thrill ride with a compelling moral debate at its core, this is genre cinema at its best.

After his disturbing indie debut Siblings of the Cape, writer-director Shinzo Katayama makes a brilliant transition to commercial genre cinema with this highly entertaining and unpredictable serial killer thriller. When her widower father Satoshi suddenly vanishes, teenager Kaede searches for him. When she goes to his old workplace, she finds a stranger answering to her father’s name. To make things worse, the young man looks awfully like the suspected serial killer on the wanted posters seen around the city. Kaede’s search for the connection between her father and the terrifying serial killer will keep you at the edge of your seat.

Eight years after the acclaimed A Girl At My Door, writer-director July Jung finally returns with her long-awaited sophomore film. Inspired by true events, Jung’s second film opens with the story of the titular character, a high school girl interning at a call centre in hopes of getting a leg up in her career. When tragedy strikes, the police investigator is faced with authority figures that refuse to take responsibility for creating the environment that led to Sohee’s fate. Using a steady hand to expose the sinister forces that exploit young people, Jung crafts a devastating social drama driven by quiet fury.

societies. Hareesh and Reshmi are immigrants from the Indian state of Kerala, working blue-collar jobs in a Delhi factory during the COVID-19 lockdowns. When a manipulated video clip goes viral among their co-workers, the couple finds their emotional, social and marital lives thrown into chaos. Far from peddling stereotypical commercialism in mainstream “Indian Cinema”, director

powerful drama

Narayanan’s tense

Zahara is a refugee from Indonesia living on a remote island in Malaysia. One day, a man who claims to be a turtle researcher comes to the island and hires Zahara to be her guide. But as the day goes on, it becomes apparent that both sides are hiding more than they let on as they engage in a power game. Produced by Edmund Yeo (River of Exploding Durians), Woo Ming Jin’s two-hander is a bewitching feminist revenge tale with a fantasy twist that is best left to be discovered by patient viewers who dare to take the plunge.

parallel

In the present, Maem is an old woman nursing her comatose husband, a general who committed atrocities decades ago. Meanwhile, her mind wanders back to the 1960s, when she was just a clockmaker’s daughter being courted by two men: a poor rickshaw driver and the army captain she would eventually marry. Beneath Jakrawal’s atmospheric vibe and beautifully composed visuals lie an uncompromising depiction of Thailand’s traumatic past and a poignant story about a woman trying to make sense of the fleeting nature of time.

Like his previous works, tomato farmer and director Juichiro Yamasaki’s melancholic third feature is set in his rural hometown of Maniwa in western Japan. With a title that alludes to a wild flower which blossoms in spring, Yamabuki is shot in grainy 16mm that complements its hardy setting and characters. South Korean equestrian athlete Chang-su (Kang Yoon-soo) was forced to give up his dream and now toils as a migrant worker at a quarry, while living with Minami who fled an abusive husband. Elsewhere in town, teenage girl Yamabuki (Kilala Inori) defies her policeman father to participate in silent protests over sociopolitical issues. The seemingly disparate lives of Chang-su and Yamabuki unfold in parallel and intersect at a difficult crossroad.

After his acclaimed directorial debut A Fish Out of Water (14th), director Lai Kuo-an once again uses magical realism to explore how children use fantasy to overcome the troubles of reality. If adolescence isn’t hard enough already, 16-year-old Melody knows that her parents are in an “empty-shell marriage”, merely staying together for her sake. Scared that she will be abandoned, Melody runs away to a deserted amusement park, where she escapes reality by imagining a fantasy world called Moon Kingdom. This wistful and compassionate tale of a fractured family and the healing power of myths was nominated for four Taipei Film Awards, including Best Actor and Best Art Direction.

Director Huang Xi’s seven-episode anthology series is a marked change of pace from her humanist Golden Horse-nominated drama Missing Johnny (14th). Produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien and featuring music by the great Lim Giong, Twisted Strings features seven darkly funny magical realist tales about how characters from different walks of life deal with the sensitive subject of death. In the series opener, three siblings reunite and argue over their father’s funeral while the funeral home staff try to relocate a missing body. In episode two, a group of friends take part in an unusual scavenger hunt, setting off an elaborate revenge plan.

孩子聾啞的生父卻突然現身。妙子與前夫重修舊好，在舊人身上 尋回失落的自己，與此同時她現任的婚姻卻面臨著更大的暗湧。 情感的痛楚固然難熬，但夫妻間的隔閡、無法分擔的哀愁與孤獨 更加令人悵惘。

“Whatever the distance between us, nothing can stop me from loving you,” sings Akiko Yano in her 1990 song “Love Life”. This lyric inspired director Koji Fukada(Harmonium [13th], The Real Thing [17th]) to tell this quietly impactful drama about trauma and the distances we create for our loved ones. Taeko and Jiro seem to share the ideal marriage, but when a family tragedy brings Taeko’s ex-husband back into their lives, Taeko is faced with the choice of moving forward or seeking comfort in the past. Like Fukada’s previous films, the story’s dramatic events are sharply contrasted with a distant gentleness that magnifies the characters’ moral complexity.

Nat

Urassaya Sperbund, Anusara Korsamphan, Kanokwan Butrachart, Wipawee Patnasiri, Keetapat Pongruea

After making a sobering contemplation of romantic trauma with Happy Old Year, eccentric Thai writer-director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit returns to the comedy genre with an inspired effort that finally brings together competitive sport stacking, arrested development, and a love of Hollywood action films. Already in his thirties, Kao only has one goal in life: To become the fastest sport stacker in the world. But when his long-suffering girlfriend Jay becomes fed up with taking care of him and decides to leave, Kao is suddenly forced to learn to become an adult while trying to fulfill his sport stacking dream and win Jay back.

Huifang,

Dong-hwan,

面臨取消。為了夢想，也為了荷包著想，阿朱媽鼓起勇氣決定單

Auntie is a middle-aged Singaporean woman whose life revolves around dancing classes in the park and bingeing Korean dramas. When her husband dies and her only son considers leaving the country for work, Auntie decides to travel to Korea on her first solo trip. After Auntie accidentally becomes stranded during the tour, a local security guard helps her find her way back, but their adventure is not without bumps along the way. Produced by Anthony Chen (Ilo Ilo, Wet Season), He Shuming’s directorial debut is a delightful and charming road movie about self-discovery and the power of the Korean wave.

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Familiar yet fresh, Hong Sang-soo’s 28th feature film revisits the auteur’s staple themes, characters and filmmaking language with new perspective. Director Byung-soo (Kwon Hae-hyo) brings his daughter, who plans to study interior design, to see his longtime designer friend Ms Kim (Lee Hye-young). After talks and drinks, Ms Kim gives them a tour of her four-storeyed apartment building, going room by room, floor by floor. The journey is ordinary yet extraordinary, as the different levels of the building point to various phases of life for Byung-soo. Hong Sang-soo again uses repeating scenarios and spaces, as well as the gentle revelations of chatter, to meditate on life’s questions and longings.

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Based on a popular web novel, the sensational BL TV series Semantic Error took Korea by storm in early 2022 with its quintessential campus love story of opposites attract starring K-pop idols. Prickly computer major Choo Sang-woo (Park Jae-chan) likes to stick to himself and stick to the rules, but his structured life is upended because of brash visual arts student Jang Jae-young (Park Seo-ham). For Sang-woo, Jae-young’s disruptive appearance is like an error that must be debugged, but pesky feelings begin to get in the way. Continuing the success of the bright youth romance series, Semantic Error flutters hearts anew in a feature-length edit with additional scenes.

BL Metamorphosis

Age is just a number when it comes to being a BL fan! 75-year-old widow Yuki (Nobuko Miyamoto) picks up a boys’ love manga one day and it opens her eyes to a new world. At the bookstore, she meets shy 17-year-old schoolgirl Urara (Mana Ashida) who reads BL on the sly. Happily reading and discussing BL together, they forge a congenial bond that heals loneliness and unlocks their inner hopes and fears. Seasoned TV director Shunsuke Kariyama (Love’s in Sight) and screenwriter Yoshikazu Okada (The 8-Year Engagement) adapt Kaori Tsurutani’s award-winning manga into a heartwarming, female-centric human drama about an unlikely friendship that inspires comfort and change.

Dir: 川村元氣 Genki Kawamura

Cast: 菅田將暉 Masaki Suda, 原田美枝子 Mieko Harada, 長澤正美 Masami Nagasawa, 永瀨正敏 Masatoshi Nagase

「我不想忘記那些美好的瞬間。」母親患上失智症，只留下無盡的 喃喃自語。童年創傷歷歷在目，怨恨也不是一時三刻就能化解，

一直不知該如何面對母親的主角，赫然醒覺自己這次將是永別。 左右為難之際，一本日記掀起了封塵已久的往事。當記憶被扭曲 與遺忘，我們能否就此原諒，並從那被掩埋的真相中得到救贖？ 身兼作者、監製多職的川村元氣，曾寫出和參與多部膾炙人口、 橫掃各大獎項的作品，包括《當這地球沒有貓》、《惡人》、《怒》、

The producer of numerous hit films and a successful novelist in his own right, Genki Kawamura now makes his directorial debut with an adaptation of his own novel. Masaki Suda stars as Izumi, a young man who realises that his mother, Yuriko (Mieko Harada), is suffering from dementia. As he tries to come to terms with his mother gradually slipping, Izumi discovers a secret from Yuriko’s past. Working with cinematographer Keisuke Imamura, Kawamura depicts Izumi and Yuriko’s bittersweet journey with audaciously crafted tracking shots that result in an enthralling cinematic experience designed for the big screen.

if This Love Disappears

7:25PM

12/11 5:20PM

Based on the award-winning bestseller that’s sold over 650,000 copies across Asia, this touching and unusual love story, featuring boy band member Shunsuke Michieda in his first starring role, is guaranteed to pull on the heartstrings. Michieda plays Toru, a shy high schooler who is forced to make a fake love confession to his classmate Maori out of peer pressure. The two begin hanging out as friends, promising to each other not to fall in love. But when Toru does develop feelings for Maori, she confesses that she has anterograde amnesia and forgets the previous day’s memories every morning.

When in Japan, a bottle of Calpis a day; when in Hong Kong, a cup of milk tea. It’s a ritual for me.

I visited Hong Kong for the first time over 10 years ago for a documentary event. During my stay in Cheung Chau for about a week, I traveled back and forth on the ferry often. I enjoyed the short ferry ride, being on the water with the residents, tourists, people on business trips and the disappointed souls. Not too fast, not too slow. The diesel engine rattles steadily like passengers stepping on their life journey.

I’ve been to Hong Kong several times since, bringing back insights every time. With The Great Buddha+, I came across more Hong Kong audiences and got to understand more about this place.

I’m very glad that HKAFF is featuring my works. I hope more Hong Kong audiences would get to know my films through this programme. Spanning over 20 years, my documentary works fully reflect my creative transformations.

Most of my films are inspired by my daily observations, such as the people on the ferry, the rattling engine, the splashing waves stirred… Stories roll out on a small ferry in the glorious harbour.

黃信堯

Huang Hsin-yao

2000

2002

2005

Long before his wondrous debut feature films (The Great Buddha+ [14th] and Classmate Minus), Huang Hsin-yao had been an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Born in 1973 in Tainan, Huang now lives in Salty Zone, Cigu District in Tainan. As a student, he participated in social and environmental movements. He then graduated from the Graduate Institute of Documentary & Film Archiving at the Tainan National University of the Arts. Huang began documentary filmmaking in 1999. Alternating between stillness and motion, his works are known for telling people’s stories in absurd circumstances with his signature satirical, self-sarcastic humour. On the other hand, Huang captures visual poetry of natural landscapes with a silent gaze.

The HKAFF presents a selection of Huang Hsin-yao’s documentary works this year. From his early work Seaman, Bluffing (which inspired the later Classmate Minus), Nimbus that won international awards, to his latest work

A Silent Gaze; each focuses on a singular subject through a distinctive style. Let’s look into the creative journey of this remarkable filmmaker from Taiwan.

As the Chinese title conveys, Huang Hsin-yao’s documentary is set in Beimen, Jiangjun and Ciqu, three coastal townships in Tainan County. And as the English title conveys, the film is an observational piece that sees Huang, a Tainan native who has lived in the region since 2005, casting a distant, silent gaze upon everyday scenes in those places. Expanding his 2012 short documentary to epic length, Huang’s perspective documents a place with a unique, rural charm and a place that is both ever-changing and seemingly stuck in time.

Built by the Japanese during the colonial era, the 16-kilometre Baileng Canal is an important waterway for residents in the eastern part of Taichung. Commissioned by the Taichung city government, Huang Hsin-yao creates a “canal movie” (as opposed to a road movie), filming along the current of the canal, going from the water source in the mountains, past the farms that depend on the water for sustenance, to the water plant that processes the water for residents. Like Cloud Nation, this film is a serene documentary that presents nature in its purest form.

When Huang Hsin-yao was just starting to pick up a camera in 1998, he pointed it at his four best friends from school. Over the course of seven years, he captured their growth from young army cadets to men with serious jobs and their own families. Together, they smoked, gambled, shared scooter seats and shot the breeze at their favourite tea joints. Shot with the intimacy of home videos but featuring the same type of sardonic humour and melancholy of his later films, Huang’s most personal and funniest documentary served as the basis for Classmates Minus, his second fiction film.

Located only 108 kilometres off the eastern coast of Taiwan, the island of Yonaguni has been the subject of territorial disputes between nations. Setting all the political noise aside, Huang Hsin-yao stepped onto the island by himself with a camera, listened to the island speak to him, and began to document Yonaguni in its most natural state. Using only 55 shots that feature only nature and animals (the only humans are the ones on campaign posters), Huang captures the true essence of Yonaguni rather than the external forces that seek to claim it for themselves.

For decades, the wetlands of Hukou in Yunlin County served as fertile farmland for the locals. When nature turned the land back into wetlands, they became a tourist attraction for those seeking proof of Taiwan’s natural beauty. However, nature’s unpredictable change also turned the residents into “climate refugees”. One of Huang’s most acclaimed films and winner of the Jury Award at the 2010 Taiwan International Documentary Festival, this empathetic short film shows the very real effects of climate change on ordinary people.

27/10 7:50PM

*5/11 1:40PM

In August 2009, Typhoon Morakot killed hundreds and caused irreversible damage to Taiwan. On the Alishan Mountains, the rainfall destroyed its forest railway and badly damaged its tourism industry for years. Huang Hsin-yao initially went up the mountain to document the aftermath of the storm. But Huang changed his approach when he claimed he saw many Wu Fengs on the mountain, referencing the Han merchant who, according to folk legends, “civilised” Taiwanese aborigines on Alishan. This scathing documentary asks whether rapid development of the region, be it by deforestation or by exploitation of its natural beauty for tourist dollars, worsened the effects of the typhoon.

Huang Hsin-yao began studying documentary filmmaking in order to make a difference as an ecological activist. While attending Tainan University of the Arts, Huang made this film as a continuation of a previous documentary about the salt evaporation ponds near Tainan. But instead of filming the ponds once more, Huang turned his camera around to capture the state of the mangrove habitat surrounding the ponds. The result marks an important evolution for Huang as an ecologically-minded documentarian.

Huang Hsin-yao’s creative journey has been evolving over the years. Be it bluffing or meditative, his works always reveal his concern for people, the land, and a lucid sense of humour. It is our honour to have A-yao with us online after the screening of Seaman and A-li 88, where he will share his views on documentary filmmaking.

One of the largest ethnic groups without an independent country to call their own, the Kurds’ experiences are bound by a collective struggle for recognition and survival, but also leavened by wildly different circumstances as shaped by their identities and their family trajectories.

It’s with this diversity in mind that we present “Visions of the Sun”, our modest programme designed to showcase how Kurdish lives are represented on screen by Kurdish filmmakers.

The Kurds were represented on film for the first time in Armenian-made silent movies like Zarê (1926) and Kurds-Yazidis (1933). It wasn’t until the 1970s that Kurdish-Turkish actor-turned-auteur Yılmaz Güney featured his own people in such as YOL (1982) and The Wall (1983).

In 2000, Kurdish cinema emerged centrestage with Bahman Ghobadi’s A Time for Drunken Horses, which won the Camera d’Or award at Cannes. The film blazed a trail for filmmakers intent in producing work of various genres and tones: reinterpretations of Westerns, romances between actors, road movies, documentaries and satires dripping with black humour.

Meanwhile, a new generation of Kurdish filmmakers are also cutting their teeth with work set in the Kurdish lands they are still living in. Combined together, all this work keep Kurdish history and culture burning bright, like the sun which serves as the Kurds’ national emblem.

YOL is the rare film whose production may have been more dramatic than its story. Written while Kurdish director Yılmaz Güney was imprisoned by Turkey’s military junta, YOL was ultimately finished after Güney escaped prison and went into exile. Banned in Turkey until 1999 due to its depiction of Kurdish culture, this story of how five prisoners spent their week of leave from prison won the Palme d’Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. The newly produced “full” version of the film restores the sixth story that was in Güney’s original script, finally realising the late filmmaker’s vision for this monumental piece of cinema.

A true-to-life tale of struggle and survival, Bahman Ghobadi’s directorial debut starkly captures the plight of a Kurdish family of five, led by 12-year-old Ayoub, who’s promoted to head of the household after his parents’ death. Ayoub turns to desperate means to earn money for his handicapped brother’s operation, and eventually throws in with a group of smugglers crossing the mountains into Iraq, where the mules are fed whiskey (hence the film’s title) to enable them to trudge just a few more steps in the harsh winter conditions. This startling portrait of unseen and frequently disregarded lives won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Blurring reality and fiction, Hüseyin Karabey’s first narrative feature chronicles the real-life love story of Turkish actress Ayça and Kurdish actor Hama Ali, who fall in love on set and then return to their respective homes in Istanbul and northern Iraq. Keeping in touch via letters and calls, the two long to reunite but the onset of the Iraq War thwarts their plans. With Hama Ali unable to leave, Ayça decides to go to him. While others are fleeing war, she embarks on a cross-border journey to an unknown country to meet her lover. Shot in documentary-like manner with the stars playing themselves and their real video letters interspersed in the film, Gitmek: My Marlon and Brando is a poignant profile of a woman’s determined love amid the turmoil of war.

Kurdish independence war hero Baran moves to a small settlement on the borders of Iran, Turkey and Iraq, where the law holds little sway, and drug and alcohol trafficking are rampant. Immediately Baran comes into conflict with corrupt tribe leader Aga Azzi, who demands Baran’s cooperation in exchange for “protection”. Meanwhile, Baran bonds with the comely Govend, a schoolteacher whose stubborn self-confidence is both a badge of honour and a scarlet letter to the conservative locals. Director Hiner Saleem transposes the Western genre to the Turkish frontiers in this handsome contemporary tale that mixes familiar tropes with modern progressive themes of independence and modernity.

role model and a member of

the Kurdistan Workers’ Party

female cadre

Free Women’s Unit. But Akol was unable to find Gulîstan and instead found women in the PKK who knew her. So Akol shifted her focus to the female guerrillas, their recollections of Gulîstan, and their preparations to fight the armed militants of the Islamic State aka ISIS. Shot in Iraqi Kurdistan, this stirring feminist documentary captures the steely resolve and unshakeable courage of remarkable women who would fight for their beliefs against religious fanatics seeking their subjugation.

Jan is a Turkish student studying in New York City. When his Kurdish grandmother goes to New York for medical treatment, she sings him a song named "Zer". Still haunted by its melody after his grandmother’s death, Jan travels across Turkey in search of the song’s origins, only to uncover the painful truth behind the Dersim massacre in 1938 and its link to his heritage. Inspired by his own three-year search for the original version of the titular song, Kazim Öz shows the power of keeping collective memories alive with this visually sumptuous road movie.

Inspired by director-writer Mano Khalil’s own experiences, this dark yet surprisingly humorous gem depicts innocence in absurdly trying times. Six-year-old Sero (Serhed Khalil) finds his life upended by his strict new teacher, who dogmatically preaches nationalism, uses corporal punishment to forbid the Kurdish language, and insists that the children hate Jews which is odd since Sero only knows his Jewish neighbors to be warm and lovable people. Khalil beautifully captures Sero’s creeping conflict, as his innocent childhood fades with the cruel realities wrought by despotism and radicalisation. Though set in a small Syrian border town in the 1980s, Khalil’s story easily finds parallel in modern-day Syria, and perhaps even elsewhere.

Part of a programme initiated by Turkish cultural institutions

Anadolu Kültür and Diyarbakir Arts Centre, which aims to bridge differences between ethnic groups in the country through art, this is a collection of short films directed by 12 women in Diyarbakir, Mardin and the Kurdish-majority city Batman. Each film is a unique gaze at the spaces and characters that occupy these cities, creating a diverse portrait of everyday life in the Kurdish regions in Turkey. They include stories about a day in the life of a residential complex, a pond that used to be a city before a dam was built, a demolished theatre named after the legendary filmmaker Yilmaz Güney, and an artist who uses old photographs to recall a lost neighbourhood.

In 2005, Philippine cinema was at a critical juncture. Once boasting one of Asia’s most productive and prosperous film industries, the country witnessed the commercial release of just 50 new domestically-made films; at the same time, independent filmmakers have begun to embrace more economical digital equipment to make edgier movies. And it’s amidst all this that the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival was born. Aimed at rejuvenating the faltering fortunes of Philippine cinema, the non-profit enterprise provided both the funds and the platform for that young, tech-savvy generation of filmmakers to find their footing. Since then, Cinemalaya has evolved well beyond its remits of being the new kid on the block; the festival is now easily the place where the Next Big Thing will make its bow before wowing the masses at home and cinephiles abroad.

With this programme, we aim to pay tribute to Cinemalaya’s achievements in nurturing the rebellious energy in Philippine independent cinema and unleashing it to audiences around the world ours included. “Explosive Fruits” is the latest of our long-running collaborations with our regional counterparts to establish an international, cross-cultural alliance of like-minded festivals.

The Woman in the Septic Tank

三個熱愛電影的年輕人，夢想以自己的獨立作品登上國際獎項 舞台。為了實現他們非一般的電影夢，他們打算先以題材突圍 而出，用貧民窟裏一位七個小孩的可憐媽媽作為原型，後鑽研 影展最愛的電影類型，決意要憑此擊中評審的心。萬事俱備， 只欠女主角，想不到影視天后竟點頭願意演出！但三個一腔熱血 的年輕人面對經驗豐富又自戀的天后，又會擦出什麼火花？菲 律賓偽紀錄片式喜劇，諷刺國際影展對異國貧窮題材的迷戀。

Rainier, Bingbong and Jocelyn are aspiring film school graduates who want to make an award bait film. Though they belong firmly among the affluent, they know that foreign film festivals are more likely to select films about poverty. Along with actress Eugene Domingo (playing a fictional version of herself), they set out to make an arthouse film about a mother in the slums who takes increasingly desperate measures to overcome her despairing circumstances. A hilarious satire about media exploitation and the film festival circuit’s obsession with poverty porn from certain regions of the world, this crowd-pleaser became the highest-grossing Filipino independent film at the time of its release.

Irma Adlawan, Ping Medina, Mercedes Cabral, Marc Justine Alvarez, Jasmine Curtis-Smith

29/10 3:20PM BC

8/11 8:00PM TO

29/10 1:30PM BC

3/11 7:55PM IFC

When the Israeli government announced changes to the citizenship eligibility of foreign workers in 2009, it threatened to remove the status of children under five years old. Desperate to prevent his four-year-old son from being forcibly removed from Israel, Filipino care worker Moises decides to keep his son indoors until his fifth birthday, when he would have a better chance of remaining.

The winner of nine awards at the 2013 Cinemalaya Film Festival, including Best Film, the Audience Award and a Special Jury Citation for Best Ensemble, Hannah Espia’s probing drama is an engaging portrait of the Filipino overseas workers community in Tel Aviv.

John Denver Trending

的災難性影響。

The acclaimed debut feature of Arden Rod Condez resonates exceptionally in our current age of social media addiction and thin-skinned moral outrage. 14-year-old John Denver’s life disintegrates when a video of him physically attacking a classmate goes viral. The clip is misleading John was reacting to a false accusation of theft but the more he protests, the more the situation spins out of control, escalating into a national news story that incenses the quick-to-judgment netizens of the Philippines. Despite its rural setting, the film unfolds at a quickening pace, as John is inexorably drawn into a waking nightmare where his innocence and intentions are rendered irrelevant by the baying of the bloodthirsty mob.

T hrough its well-developed system of seeding funds and its well-run (and very popular) festival, Cinemalaya has become the laboratory, greenhouse and market in which aspiring Philippine filmmakers learnt their trade in producing and presenting work for audiences both at home and overseas. Some titles, such as The Woman in the Septic Tank, became box-office hits, while others, such as Transit and John Denver Trending, were feted at prestigious festivals abroad. In this talk, Cinemalaya programmers look back on the evolution of the festival and its role in Philippine independent cinema.

The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (HKAFF) is back with its Young Jury and Young Critics programme again this year!

Have you ever wanted to discuss films with your friends, only to find that they were not interested at all? Want to meet fellow film-lovers who share your passion for the silver screen? Join the Young Jury to watch curated films, deliberate with fellow jurors and elect your favourite film!

Have you ever seen a mind-blowing film that you eagerly wished to tell your friends about, only to find that you were lost for words? Love writing about cinema instead?

Become a Young Critic to take your film diaries to a larger audience, where your writing will be reviewed by a professional film critic AND get published on HKAFF’s online or physical platforms!

Upon completion of the programme, participants will be awarded a certificate, which can be regarded as Other Learning Experiences (OLE) under the NSS Curriculum.

What are you waiting for? Young cinephiles, apply NOW!

Scented Screenings

Cinema has long been considered as the combination of sight and sound. But what better to go beyond these expectations by adding scents to it as well? In collaboration with Aesop again this year, the HKAFF will tease the best of your imagination and memories out of you by immersing our cinemas with eight unique fragrances. Each of them is designed to enhance your multisensory film-going experience, ensuring what you see on screen the landscapes, the characters and the general ambience of it all will linger long after the lights go up.

“Eidesis” — the latest member in Aesop’s Othertopias collection, is a beguiling fragrance with bright opening notes that develop into deep spice, damp earth and dry woods; “Erémia” — a zesty, musky whiff of a mysterious land; “Karst” — a fresh, herbaceous scent from the seashore; “Miraceti” — a waft of balsamic wood from a whisky-filled cellars on ocean-worn ships; “Hwyl” — an earthy fragrance resembling that in the Japanese forest; “Marrakech” — an evocation of Morocco’s culinary aromas and its sense of traditional hospitality; “Tacit” — a take on classical colognes with crisp top notes and spiced undertones and “Rōzu” — a woody and smoky new take on the classical Rose perfume.