Cinema nouveau
The 48th Hong Kong International Film Festival is packed with firsts - from a tete-a-tete with Oscar-nominated director Martin McDonagh to a concert featuring music composed on the spot. Mathew Scott reports.
Weird and wonderful
The festival opened with Ray Yeung's All Shall Be Well (2024), a film about a lesbian couple in their 60s. It had won the Teddy Award for best LGBTQ-themed feature film at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival in February.
Fruit Chan is this year's filmmaker in focus, and the festival is screening 10 of his films, including Durian Durian (2000) and The Abortionist (2019).
The eight films selected for the Firebird Awards' Young Cinema Competition (Chinese Language) include three that focus on the lives of the Chinese diaspora - Kurt Yuen's Fresh Off Markham (2024), A Song Sung Blue (2023) by Geng Zihan and Chong Keat-aun's Snow in Midsummer (2020).
Lee is keen to have the future generation of Hong Kong filmmakers check out the sometimes weird and generally wonderful world created by the French provocateur Jean Eustache. The festival is showing three of his feature films - A Dirty Story (1977), screened together with the short, The Photos of Alix (1980); My Little Loves (1974); and The Mother and the Whore (1973).
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