Tag: film festival

Postponement of HKIFF44 and HAF18, Cancellation of Cine Fan April/May edition

The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society have announced the postponement of the 44th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF44) and the 18th Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF18) in response to the recent novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

In making the announcement, HKIFFS Executive Director Albert Lee confirms that the Society’s two flagship events, both scheduled to start in less than six weeks, will be postponed to the summer of 2020.  However, the April/May edition of the year-round Cine Fan repertory programme has been cancelled.

“We hope to be able to share more information regarding a postponed HKIFF44 following discussions with screenings venues, as well as our many stakeholders, partners and sponsors,” said Lee.

HAF director Jacob Wong said plans are on track to hold HAF18 during the 24th Hong Kong International Film and TV Market (FILMART), which the Hong Kong Trade Development Council has just postponed to 27-29 August.

“Besides, we are still going ahead with HAF Goes to Cannes which takes place during Cannes Film Festival in May,” said Wong.  “We will announce the selected projects for this initiative in late March.”

Lee added that the postponement of HKIFF44 and HAF18 was not an easy decision to make.  “We see the need to make a socially-responsible decision and not to put the public’s safety and well-being at risk,” he said.  “Our prayers are for those who are affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak and to wish them a full and speedy recovery.”

For latest updates of HKIFF44 and Cine Fan programmes, www.hkiff.org.hk and www.cinefan.com.hk.  For information about HAF18, www.haf.org.hk.

Sixteenth Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

The Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (HKAFF) returns this month, now in it’s sixteenth year the film festival will run from the 29 October – 17 November and feature a wide range of modern and digitally remastered Asian films with numerous directors in town to talk about their work.

Opening and Closing Films: Local Directors’ Outlook on Life and the City

HKAFF2019 will open with two films. Lion Rock, Nick Leung’s second feature, is a fact-based story about how a top rock climber finds his way back on the peaks after losing his ability to walk.

Patrick Leung’s Ciao, UFO is a charming sci-fi comedy that revolves around the urban legend of a UFO hovering above Wah Fu Estate in Aberdeen. It marks the reunion of Tsui Tien-you, Wong you-nam and Charlene Choi.

Closing the festival are films from two local female directors. My Prince Edward is winner of the First Feature Film Initiative launched by the Film Development Fund. Norris Wong’s directorial debut is a lighthearted story about the struggles a woman faces as she prepares to get married.

Starring Dada Chan and Kevin Chu, The Secret Diary of a Mom to Be is a comedy about the lives of contemporary career women and the unexpected surprises in life. It is the second feature film by writer-director Luk Yee-sum.

Gala Presentations: The Fallen, Missing, and The Garden of Evening Mists

The HKAFF Gala Presentation features three films of distinctive styles. After making an explosive debut with G Affairs, director Lee Cheuk-pan returns with The Fallen, a gritty and stylish revenge thriller reminiscent of classic Hong Kong crime thrillers. Irene Wan returns to the silver screen and is captivating as the puppet master of the sinister revenge scheme. Inspired by a popular internet novel,

Ronnie Chau’s feature debut Missing is a supernatural thriller about the mystical gateway. Gillian Chung stars as a social worker who is desperately searching his missing father in the mountains.

Starring Sylvia Chang, Angelica Lee and Abe Hiroshi, The Garden of Evening Mists is a star-studded drama about memory, loss and the art of gardening. It is an adaptation of Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng’s Man Booker Prize-nominated novel by Taiwanese director Tom Lin.

Special Presentations: Documentaries, Independent Films, and Romantic Dramas

In the Special Presentations section. Documentary director Wong Siu-pong turns his camera on Hong Kong’s medical system with 3CM, a documentary about Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) patients who struggle to live. Cheuk Cheung’s Bamboo Theatre is a documentary that follows ritual practices in various villages and remote islands of Hong Kong, as well as how bamboo theatres are built and dismantled.

Award-winning director Chow Kwun-wai’s romantic drama Beyond the Dream is about the relationship between a recovering schizophrenic and a psychological counselor. Benny Lau, who is known for his nostalgic youth love stories, returns with Your World, Without Me, a pure-hearted tale set in Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan. Memories to Choke on, Drinks to Wash them Down is a collection of short films from cinematographer-director Leung Ming-kai and partner Kate Reilly. It contains three stories about how Hongkongers bear the weight of treasured memories, raise themselves up to meet present challenges, and stand ready.

The Murders of Oiso is a co-production of Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, produced by Hong Kong director Fei-Pang Wong and directed by Misawa Takuya. The mystery-drama follows a juvenile gang who encounter a series of unsettling mysteries.

Director in Focus – Mohammad Rasoulof; Country in Focus: Cambodia

The films of Mohammad Rasoulof reflect reality, revealing to audiences hidden and uncomfortable truths about society. Rasoulof is regarded as a troublemaker by the Iranian government, and yet he never caves to authoritarian pressure or corruption. As a tribute to the director who has just been sentenced to one year in prison for defying state censorship, HKAFF presents a seven-film retrospective. Mehdi Abdollahzadeh an Iranian film critic will give a talk on Rasoulof’s films.

This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the end of the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime. This history is very much ingrained in the films coming out of the country. HKAFF has chosen seven films to illustrate the development of Cambodia cinema in the last four decades. Directors Davy Chou and Sok Visal will attend a talk on Cambodian cinema.

16th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
Date: 29 October – 17 November, 2019
Venues: Broadway Cinematheque, Broadway The One, My Cinema Yoho Mall, AMC Pacific Place, Palace IFC, Movie Movie Citiplaza, Premiere Elements
Tickets: www.cinema.com.hk

KINO/19 – German Films of 2018/19

The German film festival KINO returns with a selection of German cinema from 2018/ 2019 featuring “exciting stories, big emotions and powerful images.” Organised by the Goethe Institut KINO/19 runs from the 11-20 October with screenings at HKAC Louis Koo Cinema, HK Film Archive and Elements Premiere.

Opening KINO/19 is Balloon, the story of a dramatic escape from East Germany ten years before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A Regular Woman is based on the true story of the “honor killing” of the young Turkish woman in Berlin. The journey of the two unequal friends in Roads shows that sometimes you have to travel very far to find out the truth. In Chris the Swiss, a dangerous search for clues leads back to the Balkan war of the 90s, whose violence is made palpable with threatening black-and-white animations, an award-winning documentary thriller from Switzerland.

KINO/19 films:

Balloon, A Regular Woman, 25 KM/H, Gundermann, The Collini Case, Chris the Swiss, The Most Beautiful Couple, The Mover, Roads, Sweethearts.

KINO/19 – German Film Festival
Balloon, A Regular Woman, 25 KM/H, Gundermann, The Collini Case, Chris the Swiss, The Most Beautiful Couple, The Mover, Roads, Sweethearts.
Date: 11-20 October, 2019
Venue: HKAC, Louis Koo Cinema, HK Film Archive, Elements Premiere
Tickets: $95, $90, $75

Puff Film Festival – International Women’s Day 2019

Updated (3 March): To celebrate International Women’s Day in 2019 the Pineapple Underground Film Festival (PUFF) have put together three nights of films by female filmmakers both local and from across the globe.

The screenings on the 6 & 14 March at the Kino in Jordan are intended to raise the profile and awareness of women behind the camera. The night of funny and quirky short films planned for the 7 March has rescheduled to April, the exact date to be confirmed .

Entry to all screenings is Free by registration on the PUFF website here .

Puff Film Festival – International Women’s Day 2019
Date: 8pm, 6-7, 14 March, 2019
Venue: Kino
Tickets: Free register here

Premiere Cinema to Open at Elements

Premiere Cinema will open at Elements on 1 March. Operated by Broadway Circuit the new cinema has 12 houses containing 1,600 seats, two of which are equipped with Dolby ATMOS 3D sound – one of which is main house, and the other is a small ‘VIP’ house.

The opening film selection and the cinema amenities have yet to be announced. Check the website for details www.cinema.com.hk

Tenth Anniversary European Union Film Festival

The Tenth European Union Film Festival (EUFF) brings 15 award-winning films to the screens of Broadway Cinematheque and AMC Pacific Place between the 21 February and 10 March.

To mark the 10th Anniversary, this year’s EUFF features a special free opening performance of the Spanish film Champions replete with orchestra, several free screenings of European classics including one to celebrate International Women’s Day (8 March). There’s also a Q&A with the director of the closing film, Michael Inside, Frank Berry.

The films featured in the festival are: The Best of All Worlds, After Love, Bear with Us, The Eternal Road, Just a Breath Away, 3 Days in Quibero, Aurora Borealis: Northern Lights, Michael Inside, Dogman, An Impossibly Small Object, Breaking the Limits, Mother Knows Best, Champions, A Serious Game, Eldorado, Amelie, The Lives of Others, Female Pleasure. Tickets are available here

European Union Film Festival
Date: 21 February – 10 March, 2019
Venue: Broadway Cinematheque; AMC Pacific Place
Tickets: $95, $85

Hong Kong Salento International Film Festival 2018

The seventh Hong Kong Salento International Film Festival (HKSIFF) presents six of the best films from last year’s Salento Film Festival at the Grand Cinema from the 8-13 May. The films are from from Italy, Russia, Israel, Taiwan and Iran.

American Fango, the semi-autobiographical film by Italian director Gabriele Altobelli, presents a love and self-searching story about an Italian actor who leaves Rome and goes to New York where he pursues romance with several beautiful ladies.

Blue Hollywood, the feature directorial debut of award-winning Italian director Francesco Gabriele, is about two young actors who meet on the path to a shared dream, the Acting Summer Programme held in London. Stepping foot in Hollywood, they walk at their own pace due to different approaches, priorities and even life-changing decisions. It is a journey filled with desire, determination and disappointment.

Beneath the Silence is set in 1973, a time when PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) was not recognized as a medical condition. Daphna, the wife of an ex-soldier, struggles to get help from the military in order to maintain her husband Menashe’s last bits of sanity while their 10-year-old son, Shlomi, tries to understand what has happened to his father and why he is different from what he was. It is the debut feature film by the Israeli filmmaking duo Erez Mizrahi and Sahar Shavit. 

About Love, directed by the famous Russian Director Vladimir Bortko, is inspired by L. Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”. It is a film about adultery and erotic romance, showing the life and moral values of modern elites.

The Iranian film Cold Breath, directed by Abbas Raziji, illustrates the struggles of Maryam, an impoverished person who was born as a woman but lives as a man. When her daughter succumbs to cancer she must find a way to pay for treatment. Trusting in love for survival, Maryam faces her greatest fears head on when her secret is revealed.

The Receptionist is the debut film of London-based Taiwanese director Jenny Lu. The story is based on real facts and portrays the dark underworld of the illegal massage parlours business in London. It is filmed in the first person angle of the Taiwanese college graduate Tina who has resorted to work as a receptionist in a massage parlour during the economic crisis in 2008.

HKSIFF Screening Schedule:

8 May, 7:50 pm – About Love
Vladimir Bortko | Russia 2017 | 93 min | Category: III

9 May, 7:50 pm – Beneath the Silence
Erez Mizrahi & Sahar Shavit | Israel 2016 | 106 min | Category: IIB

10 May, 7:50 pm – American Fango
Gabriele Altobelli | Italy/USA 2017 | 104 min | Category: IIB

8 May, 9.45 pm / 9 May, 9.55 pm / 10 May, 9.50 pm / 11 May, 7:50 pm (SOLD OUT) / 13 May, 7.50 pm – The Receptionist
 Jenny Lu | Taiwan/UK 2016 | 100 min | Category: IIB

12 May, 6:10 pm – Blue Hollywood
Francesco Gabriele | Italy/UK/USA 2017 | 82 min | Category: III

13 May, 6:10 pm – Cold Breath
Abbas Raziji | Iran 2017 | 85 min | Category: IIA