Take-5: 47th HKIFF ’23
the Hong Kong International Film Festival returns in an almost 100% live, in-theatre, full capacity form, and if you’re up for it, here are five standouts to get you started.
I know. It seems like we were just here. That’s because we were. The Hong Kong International Film Festival gets back at it with edition #47 barely six months after #46. You can blame that on the ’Rona too. Safely re-ensconced in its comfy March slot, the Festival kicks off with Filmmaker in Focus Soi Cheang Pou-soi’s grisly murder mystery Mad Fate (which had a special screening at Berlin in February), Ann Hui’s paean to poetry, Elegies, and closes with the multi-purposely monikered Vital Sign, starring the Hardest Working Man In Hong Kong Show Biz, Louis Koo Tin-lok. Beyond the starry premieres, HKIFF has new stuff from Tsai Ming-liang (Where), Claire Denis (Stars at Noon), Werner Herzog (two! The Fire Within: Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft and Theater of Thought), restored classics by Hou Hsiao-hsien (A City of Sadness), Patrick Tam (Nomad Director’s Cut) and the freak show that is Lars von Trier (The Kingdom television series) among , roughly, 200 other screening programmes. The retrospectives this year are on Japanese satirist Juzo Itami (Tampopo never gets old), and the eternally cool duo of Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, who can always be counted on to pad out a ticket. And there are free Community Screenings, a director’s talk with Cheang, a Tsai Masterclass at M+, and a pile of short films – live action and animated – you should check out. If nothing else, get ahead of next year’s Oscar pool.
HKIFF runs March 30 to April 10. Get full programme details and ticketing info (public sales start Tuesday at 10am) at www.hkiff.org.hk.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
| Director: Laura Poitras, USA |
Section: Gala: Cinephile Paradise
Laura Poitras (an Oscar winner for Citizenfour, The Oath) takes double aim, kind of, at the life of photographer and AIDS and PAIN activist Nan Goldin, as well as her epic take-down of the Sackler family-owned Purdue Pharma, which is almost single-handedly to blame for the United States’ massive opioid addiction epidemic. Poitras and Goldin prove the kind of power carefully targetted, on-the-ground activism can have, even when pitted against goliath corporations, and in doing so give us all a little hope that you can, indeed, eat the rich.
Bad Education [黑的教育]
| Director: Kai Ko, Taiwan | Section: Young Cinema Competition (Chinese Language) III
Actor Kai Ko (You Are the Apple of My Eye, Moneyboys) steps into the director’s chair for Bad Education, a violent, often uncomfortably funny crime romp written by director Giddens Ko, who directed Ko in his acting debut – the aforementioned Apple. Freshly sprung from high school, three pals find themselves entwined with a badass gangster and his crew, and get taught a lesson they’ll never forget. Swift, economical, and truly nasty, Ko picked up Golden Horse nom for Best New Director for his work, and co-star Berant Zhu actually won a Supporting Actor prize. An impressive debut.
Burning Days
| Director: Emin Alper, Türkiye
| Section: World Cinema: Global Vision
Emin Alper follows up 2014’s Frenzy with this drama about Emre, a rookie prosecutor in the small town of Yaniklar, whose first case turns out to be a sexual assault. As with all things rape, getting justice is not as cut and dried as it should be, and Emre winds up caught up in a scandal that reveals the homophobia, misogyny and judgey group-think that permeate Turkish society. The town’s also dealing with a water shortage, so the sinkhole imagery is a bit on the nose, but it doesn’t make the condemnation of backwards patriarchy any less powerful. And it does it all in a taut, tense, watchable thriller.
The King of Wuxia
| Director: Lin Jing-jie, Taiwan | Section: Documentaries: Filmmakers and Filmmaking
Dear god, kung fu nerds, you best be in line for this already. This epic review, analysis and biography of GOAT wuxia director King Hu (Come Drink With Me) taps legends Cheng Pei-pei, Sammo Hung, John Woo and about 40 others to examine his artistry, his influences and his impact on filmmaking in Asia and beyond. The King of Wuxia plays in two parts, The Prophet Was Once Here and The Heartbroken Man on the Horizon, and director and obvious fan Lin Jing-jie makes every minute worth it. A must-see for kung fu and film nerds alike.
r.M.N
| Director: Cristian Mungiu, Romania | Section: Masters & Auteurs
If you haven’t caught up with Romanian director Cristian Mungiu yet, who made a bunch of stellar shorts and Occident before the massive mic drop that was 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, here’s a good chance to start. Once again Mungiu is dissecting Romanian culture, this time in a Transylvanian village whose uneasy, diverse peace is rocked by three migrant workers who drop in. The film ends with a nearly 20-minute one shot, when all the ugliness bubbling just under the surface rises and is laid bare for all to see. And acknowledge. And be shamed for. No one does social smackdown quite like Mungiu.