The Hong Kong Film Festival (HKFFUK) returns for its fourth edition from 25th September to 4th October.
The festival presents reflective and shape-shifting cinema from Hong Kong, the wider Asian diaspora and beyond. This edition features 21 screenings and events, 40 titles with 17 UK premieres across 11 venues ranging from the Barbican, ICA, Ritzy and Rio cinema in London.
Supported by BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding National Lottery Good Cause funding and Amnesty International UK. Festival director, Ching Wong says, “This year, we wanted the festival to continue to open up different ways of thinking about Hong Kong — not only through where we come from, but through the many
places, histories and communities Hong Kong cinema has been connected to. We wanted to look at diaspora as an agency, an active force both behind the camera and on screen — and in that, diasporic communities find themselves speaking to one
another.
This edition also marks the beginning of a more year-round festival. Rather than everything happening within a single stretch, we want to create more time and space for films to travel, for conversations to develop, and for us to build deeper relationships with audiences and communities across the UK.”
The festival opens on 25th September with the theatrical UK premiere of Palimpsest: The Story of the Name. A film by renowned director Mary Stephen (this year’s filmmaker in focus), Hong Kong born, Paris based who looks into the mystery and history of her family name, Stephen – the only English surname in the former British colony. The festival also features UK premieres of her first feature Shades of Silk and three experimental shorts; as well as her collaborations with Eric Rohmer as editor and composer.
The Repositioning (in) Hong Kong Cinema brings contemporary features that explore the fluidity of Hong Kong. This culminates in the UK premiere of Deadline. A thriller set in a dystopian prestigious school, where a note predicts a student’s suicide in exam season causing panic amidst the highly stressed student body. A well told film, and a distant cousin to Battle Royale, the film comments on the suffocating nature of the education system in the country.
Classics Revisited provides updates of two 1980s New Wave films, My Name Ain’t Suzie starring Angie Chen and My Heart is That Eternal Rose starring Kenny Bee, Joey Wong and Tony Leung.
Tickets available to purchase at hkff.uk or ticketing sites of individual venues. More will be announced on their social channels:
IG: @hkff.unitedkingdom, Facebook: /hkff.uk and X: @HKFF_UK
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