All My Sisters focuses for the most part of on two young women who happen to be the director's nieces (Film review)

  

Advertising for the 50th Hong Kong International 

Film Festival hanging on the railings of an overhead bridge  

 

All My Sisters (Austria-France-Germany-Iran, 2025) 

- Massoud Bakshi, director and co-producer (with five others)

- Part of the HKIFF's Documentary Competition program 

 

The first film of the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival that I viewed 18 films ago was Woman and Child, an Iranian cinematic offering.  The final film of those I chose to watch also hails from Iran.  (All My Sisters is officially listed as four country co-production but is very recognizably an Iranian work.)  

 

To some extent, this is not something that's extraordinary as the Hong Kong International Festival has long programmed offerings from that Middle Eastern country (and, in fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's been a big champion of Jafar Panahi over the years.)  At the same time though, I figure this is also a reflection of Iran having been in the news in recent months (even before the Iran-USA War commenced); and the focus on Iranian women in the films (I think also of Past Future Continuous) selected for this edition of the HKIFF reflecting this.

 

Of course this is not to say that the likes of All My Sisters got selected by the Hong Kong International Film Festival as a "pity vote".  Because it genuinely is an interesting documentary work; one that is the result of filmmaker Massoud Bakshi training his camera on his two nieces for a couple of decades or so and then putting together home videos that, individually, can seem rather ordinary but collectively make for an interesting portrait of two sisters growing up and coming of age in Tehran under the rule of the Mullahs.

 

When we first see Mahya and Zahra in All My Sisters, they are sans hijab as they are still young -- and, as Massoud Bakshi stresses, in the company of family.  Even while it's clear that they are living in Iran, they still can seem like generic carefree preteens similar to girls in their age group in various other parts of the world as they happily listen to what's emanating from cassette players, playing with Barbies at home, and swinging on equipment in public playgrounds.

 

But at the first sign of puberty, the headscarves get put on.  Also, their religious grandmother starts trying to get them more interested in the Quran and Islam in general.  And there is a distinct and growing sense that their lives will be more restricted and less carefree.  (It would have been interesting for there to have been a parallel coverage of Mahya and Zahra's male contemporaries.  But the glimpses we see of the men as well as boys, who can go about their lives with much less covering, already says quite a bit.)

 

Something that is stressed more than once in All My Sisters is that what's shown in the film is shown with the consent of Mahya and Zahra.  Which makes it really surprising, then, that we see them being among the Iranians who take part in the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests.

 

At the same time, this helps makes the title of the film make sense.  In that, for a good part of it, I thought it would have been more appropriately entitled "My Two Nieces".  But when Mahya and Zahra are depicted and looked upon as representative Iranian women, than the chosen title of All My Sisters makes quite the political statement about Iranian women and society as a while indeed.

 

My rating for this film: 7.         

Whispers in the Woods shows how precious and beautiful sightings of truly wildlife can be (Film review)

  

The kind of poster that makes me want to watch 

the documentary film it's for! :)

 

Whispers in the Woods (France, 2025) 

- Vincent Mournier, director, cinematographer (with Laurent Joffrion and Antoine Lavorel) and co-producer (with four others) 

- Part of the HKIFF's Documentary Competition program 

 

When I saw the poster for Whispers in the Woods, I got to thinking of Ildikó Enyedi's On Body and Soul (2017), a magical film with beautiful imagery involving a stag and a doe.  Ironically, I viewed Vincent Mournier's documentary less than 24 hours after viewing Enyedi's latest offering and found myself comparing it very favorably against Silent Friend! 

 

In fairness, Whispers in the Woods and Silent Friend are two very different works; not least since the former is a wildlife documentary and the latter a fictional work with flora as well as human characters.  This being said, I must say that I found myself far more mesmerised by Mournier's work than Enyedi's and also came away with a far greater appreciation of the wonders of nature too.

 

A personal offering that has him both in front of and behind the camera as well as directing and co-producing, Whispers in the Woods shows three generations of his family -- celebrated wildlife photographer Vincent himself, his father, Michel, and his teen-aged son, Simon -- sharing their love of nature, particularly the creatures, great and small, that dwell in the verdant forests of the Vosges in France, and how to look and listen for these wild things.          

 

At home out in the woods like the wildlife whose presence they very much appreciate catching precious sightings and sounds of, the Mourniers' respect for nature is a great contrast to such as the cruel shooters of elephants seen in Werner Herzog's Ghost Elephants (another nature documentary viewed at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival).  Recalling Herzog's offering once more: the Mourniers' uncanny ability to track down the wildlife that captivate them seems comparable to that of the expert trackers enlisted to look for the elusive eponymous elephants of that set-in-Africa documentary.

 

One evening in their cabin in the woods, Simon asks his grandfather what's his favourite wildlife spotting he's made.  Understandably, Michel has to pause to think before answering that it was when he spotted a capercaillie in the mist that appeared to him like a ghostly apparition.  Later, when it is revealed that this member of the grouse tribe is now extinct in France, the (re)viewer realizes how rare and precious this sighting this was; hence it being more treasured than sublime sights such as a doe, its young and a stag tranquilly crossing a silver-tinged river that the Mourniers share with the viewers of Whispers in the Woods.  

 

Deciding that he would like his grandson to also have the experience of catching sight of a capercaillie, Michel decides to take Simon -- with Vincent going along too -- on a winter journey to Norway, where these non-migratory sedentary birds still are to be found.  It is a measure of how much they value their nature experiences that they are prepared to journey that far away from home and spend time out in snowy cold conditions to glimpse these rare birds.  And it is a measure of how successful the people behind Whispers in the Woods are at communicating the pricelessness of such experiences that this documentary's viewers will find it is perfectly understandable that the Mourniers would want to do so.

 

My rating for this film: 9. 

The alternative Silent Friend gets one looking at plants in different ways! (Film review)

 

The Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of 

Silent Friend that I attended had a post-screening Q&A

with its Hungarian director and Hong Kong star 

 

A more close-up shot of Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Ildikó Enyedi
 

Silent Friend (Germany-Hungary-France, 2025)

- Ildikó Enyedi, director and co-scriptwriter (with Tina Kaiser and Corinne Le Hong)

- Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-wai,  Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm

- Part of the HKIFF's Galas program 

 

My paternal grandmother was a vegetarian while her husband was not. At a family dinner one day, after she tut-tutted over my grandfather enjoying eating meat, he asked her: "How do you know plants don't have feelings too?  They are living things too, after all!"    

 

For some reason, that conversation stuck with me all these years.  And I got to thinking about it again while viewing Silent Friend, Ildikó Enyedi's mystical-leaning film in which various plants prominently feature and (even) get mentioned in the end credits alongside the cinematic offering's human cast and crew.  This not least because I could imagine this alternative movie's director or at least one of the main human characters in this rather fanciful movie sharing my grandfather's views about flora!

 

Set on a Germany university's leafy campus, Silent Friend tells the story of a trio of individuals who share the same space at various points in time -- not with each other but a giant gingko tree that is lovingly lensed (and turns out to even have some "stunt doubles"!).  Tony Leung Chiu-wai (in his first ever European film appearance) plays his namesake, a Hong Kong neuroscientist who finds himself locked down on a near empty campus in the lockdown days of the Covid pandemic. Unable to work with his usual research subjects (human babies), he decides to conduct his research on brainwaves on a gingko tree -- and, in the process, attracts the attention and suspicion of a stranger (played by Sylvester Groth) who literally as well as metaphorically doesn't speak his language.

 

Although Tony does talk (including via video calls) to other humans (including a fellow scientist essayed by Léa Seydoux) from time to time, he seems on the introverted side.  This also is the case with Hannes (played by Enzo Brumm), a student at the same university in the segment of Silent Friend that is set in 1972.  And while he, too, encounters the gingko tree that Tony conducts experiments on, the plant that Hannes actually spends more time with -- and conducts his own experiments on, with truly startling results! -- is a potted geranium that belongs to his housemate-crush.

 

If truth be told, the section of Silent Friend that was set in 2020 seemed over indulgent at times while Hannes came across as rather weedy and was the least compelling to me of the film's three main human characters.  In contrast, I was consistently absorbed by the section of the movie that was set in 1908 and is centered on the first female student accepted into the university's biology department. 

 

Grete (portrayed by Luna Wedler, whose performance won the Marcello Mastrioanno award for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 2025 Venice Film Festival) impresses in an early scene when she is questioned by a sexist old male professor intent on humiliating her.  But it is after she takes on a job (in return for room and board) with a photographer and learns to use a camera that she truly blooms.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the decision to have this section of Silent Friend be in black and white came out of the photographs she shoots looking more arresting in black and white than colour.)

 

I don't think it'll surprise when I state that the best, downright exhilarating scenes in Silent Friend involve the humans in the presence of plants.  What may be a bit more unexpected though is my thinking that there actually is more than one silent friend in this movie; and that while they are indeed plants in the 2020 and 1972 sections, it seemed to me that in the 1908 section, Grete's silent friend may well have been her camera (which allows her to see and depict plants, and herself too, in new, creative ways)?!

 

My rating for this film: 6. 

Two Prosecutors tells a tale that's sadly predictable but chilling all the same (Film review)

 

Poster for the ninth film I viewed at the 

50th Hong Kong International Film Festival 

 

Two Prosecutors (France-Germany-Netherlands-Latvia-Romania-Lithuania-Ukraine, 2025) 

- Sergei Loznitsa, director and co-scriptwriter (with Georgy Demidov)

- Starring: Alexander Kutznetsov, Aleksandr Filippenko, Anatoliy Beliy 

- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program 

 

For much of Two Prosecutors, one only sees a single prosecutor on screen: Kornev (portrayed by Alexander Kutznetsove, whose nose looks like that of someone who emerged much the worse from a brutal boxing match or game of rugby!), a young government prosecutor only three months into his career.  Naive and idealistic, after coming into possession of a letter written in blood by a political prisoner, he decides to go see and hear the man: a former local party stalwart who had visited and given a speech about truth and Bolshevism at Kornev's law school.

 

Despite the prison head trying to dissuade him from doing so in multiple ways, Kornev stubbornly persists in meeting with a man considered so dangerous that he's been put in solitary confinement far away from other prisoners and watched over by multiple guards.  This despite  Stepniak (essayed by Aleksandr Filippenko) being elderly and physically weak, and, in fact being pretty close to death's door. 

 

It's pretty obvious that Stepniak has been physically tortured, and so badly that his internal organs are badly messed up.  It's less certain why the old Bolshevik ended up being among the victims of what looked to have been a power struggle that saw the NKVD (secret police; precursor of the KGB) infiltrate and take control of the Communist Party apparatus in their city of Bryansk. In any case, Stepniak adamantly maintained that if only his tale was told to Joseph Stalin, he would be freed and wrongs righted.  And asks Kornev to do just that.  Or, at the very least, appeal to someone in the central government over in Moscow to come clean up the locally centered mess.

 

Kornev, an upright, card-carrying member of the Communist Party, agrees to do so.  And journeys to Moscow to report all this to the man who's effectively his top boss: the Procurator General, Andrey Vyshinsky (Anatoli Beliy plays the film's second titular prosecutor, and real life historical figure).  But when they meet... well, let's just say that this scene is as chilling, if more so, than the moments when Stepniak shows Kornev the torture marks on his body as well as arms and legs.

 

Those who know that 1937, the year that Two Prosecutors is set, was the height of what's known as Stalin's Great Terror (or Purge) will have known early on where this film adaptation of a novella by Georgy Demidov, a Soviet physicist-writer-political prisoner was heading.  But it's the journey, rather than the destination, that really matters with regards to this tale. And director Loznitsa masterfully keep's one attention and stokes one's mounting horror regarding how things will end for the honorable Kornev for this gripping work's entire running time.   

 

By the way, that director Loznitsa was unable to make this film in his native Ukraine or Russia tells you speaks volumes about the current state of those parts of the former Soviet Union.  Equally clear is how Two Prosecutors is a strong indictment of the kind of regime that punishes righteous and idealistic folks who seek to do good unto one's fellow citizens. 

 

My rating for this film: 7.5  

Two very different documentaries viewed at the 2026 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

  

Advertising for the 50th Hong Kong 

International Film Festival seen around town

 

Ghost Elephants (USA, 2025)

- Werner Herzog, director-scriptwriter 

- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program 

 

Some years ago, I was talking to a film programmer about what films are fine to be viewed on a small screen and what needs to be seen on a big one.  At the time, I thought that documentaries and domestic dramas didn't lose as much when viewed on home video than blockbuster epics.  He begged to differ, stating that all films have are best seen on a big screen since that's where they were made to be screened by filmmakers.

 

Over the years, I came to his way of thinking.  And particularly appreciate it when I get to view a film on the truly big screen at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's 1,734-seater Grand Theatre -- as was the case with Werner Herzog's documentary about the epic journey undertaken in search of an elusive herd of elephants in Angola's hauntingly beautiful as well as ecologically very important Bié (aka Central) Plateau.

 

As is expected of a work by Herzog, Ghost Elephants is not a conventional documentary.  (Though having said this, as a friend noted, it is one of the veteran German auteur's more conventional offerings.)  This particularly so in his injecting and emphasising mystical elements -- by way of the San people (popularly referred to as "Bushmen") whose tracking skills can seem close to supernatural and also a local king's recounting of an ancestral legend involving an elephant that shed its skin -- to his documentation of what's effectively a scientific expedition led by zoologist-conservationist Dr Steve Boyes in search of what could well be currently the largest land animals on the planet and maybe even a previously undocumented elephant sub-species.

 

Something that can be endearing about Herzog is how so much seems to fascinate him.  In Ghost Elephants, it's not just the titular subjects but those who go in search of it, and the peoples of the foreign land that he encounters along the way.  And while the sight of the elephants are hard to ignore when they appear on screen, the Bié plateau along with other views of the African landscape are exquisitely filmed too, and come across as characters in their own right with parts to play in the story being told.

 

Speaking of story: along with the documentation of a magnificent scientific obsession (on the part of Steve Boyes) and the wonders of nature, Ghost Elephants also tell of humans' inhumanity in the treatment of Mother Nature; pointing out that casualties of Angola's so-called "civil war" included wildlife as well humans, and showing archival footage of a 1960s-era elephant hunt that involved shooting at them from a helicopter.  

 

Which has me thinking it's a curious, and lamentable, omission on Herzog's part that he didn't mention in the documentary that the Bié plateau was, as per the Wikipedia entry on it, "deeply affected by slavery, with estimates of as much as half the local population being enslaved in the mid-1800s".  Perhaps it will be the subject of a follow-up work from the filmmaker?  Though, to judge from what one sees in the film, the chances are higher that he will return to Africa to make a work focused on the San people, who he confessed out loud in Ghost Elephants to finding it hard to not over-romanticise!

 

My rating for the film: 7.0 

 

Do You Love Me (Lebanon-France-Germany, 2025) 

- Lana Daher, director and co-scriptwriter (along with Qutaiba Barhamji)

- Part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program 

 

In the first few minutes of her documentary, Lebanese filmmaker Lana Daher explictly informs the audience of Do You Love Me that this work will not show events taking place in chronological order and that the effect may be disorientating -- but if so, it's on purpose.  What she didn't state in the work itself -- but I think should be clear by way of a look at the offering's title -- is that this also is a film that works best if the viewer engages with it emotionally as well as intellectually.

 

Clearly a labour of love by someone who loves Lebanon, Do You Love Me presents a history of a nation with no national archive by selecting from, and splicing, images and sounds from more than 20,000 hours of audiovisual footage spanning some 70 years.  Seven years in the making, this 75 minute work incorporates news and feature film clips, TV programmes, home videos, personal photographs in an initially dizzying and altogether ingenious way.

 

Through the eyes, ears and work of Lebanese people of various ethnicities, religions, ages and so on, we see the country's complexity, beauty, problems, horrors and humanity.  Viewers are treated to scenes of everyday life, scenes of violence, and even scenes of violence that, tragically, have become everyday.  (And yes, I am aware of what's happening to, and in, Lebanon currently.  Which makes it all the more important that Do You Love Me was made, and bittersweet to view.)

 

Like it does in the country of some 5 million people, Beirut -- where approximately half of the people live -- looms large in the film.  Director Daher does not hide that this city that's the 16th largest in the Arab world is socioculturally divided along religious lines but also shows both the Christian and Muslim sides, in joyous as well as unhappy scenes, and always with humanity.

 

Although it effectively begins with scenes of the sea, it's the sense of humanity that overwhelmingly courses through Do You Love Me.  Mesmerising and increasingly hypnotic, the choices of visuals and music are masterful.  And while I admittedly came away from this work still not knowing enough of Lebanon to love it, I must say that I do feel that I learnt enough to respect the people of Lebanon and feel that they deserve better, including more peaceful and good times than they are currently facing as well as have faced over the years and decades.  

 

My rating for this film: 8.0.    

My 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival-ing kicks off with "Woman and Child" (Iran-France-Germany, 2025)! (Film review)

 

My tickets for the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival!

 

Woman and Child (Iran-France-Germany, 2025)

- Saeed Roustaee, director and co-scriptwriter (with Azad Jafarian)

- Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi, Soha Niasti, Maziar Seyedi, Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee, Hassan Pourshirazi, Sinan Mohebi

- Part of the HKIFF's Global Vision program 

 

A confession: I did not originally plan to attend a Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of Woman and Child.  Rather, a booking error resulted in my coming by a ticket.  But after seeing that it was directed by the same helmer as Leila's Brothers  (Iran, 2022), which I had viewed -- and got much out of -- at a previous edition of the HKIFF, I decided that the mistake might be a blessing in disguise.

 

Made after Saeed Roustaee had served a six-month prison sentence and a filmmaking ban imposed on him by the Iranian government -- for entering Leila's Brothers in the Cannes Film Festival! -- had been lifted, Woman and Child was made with the approval of the same regime.  Something that I find interesting since this drama centering on a widow with two children who lives with her mother and sister is one that yet another Iranian film that doesn't seem to sugercoat the lives of Iranian people, and their everyday struggles.

 

Mahnaz (portrayed by Parinaz Izadyar) is a hospital nurse who is being romantically pursued by a freelance ambulance driver named Hamid (who comes in the form of Saeed Roustaee film regular, Payman Maadi).  Although Hamid's pressuring her to get married to him causes some stress, Mahnaz seems to harbour genuine affections for him.  And, also, rather inexplicably, her son, Aliyah (played by Sinan Mohebi), who's the most annoying child I've seen in a film since Tan Chui Mui's Barbarian Invasion (Malaysia-Hong Kong-Mainland China, 2021)'s Yu Zhou.

 

So part of me was happy to see him being taken out of the picture fairly early into the movie.  And somewhat inexplicable to me that this development could leave Mahnaz so incredibly distraught that she literally faints at one point in the film.  And, also, becomes not only so emotionally numbed as well as upset that she neglects her much less annoying daughter, Neda (played by Arshida Dorostkar) as well as her own self and others: because, contrary to the title of the film, there's more than one child in the picture.

 

As the reviewer for Variety complained, "none of [Mahnaz's] actions makes the slightest sense". While I agree with that assessment, I'm less in agreement that it's not completely understandable.  Because, well, humans can be incredibly illogical, especially with regards to human relations and when powerful emotions are triggered.  Which certainly is in the case in Woman and Child. (Incidentally, I think that if the title hadn't already been taken, "Woman on a Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" might have been a good one for this movie!) 

 

How you feel about this will undoubtedly affect your overall assessment of this offering that, for me, was involving and actually pretty emotionally gripping throughout.  In addition, I felt that Mahnaz's multi-dimensional interactions with her mother (portrayed by Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee) and younger sister Mehri (played by Soha Niasti) that alternately help to relieve and heal but at other times further threaten to drive her over the edge are fascinating to behold.  

 

More than by the way, I think Woman and Child would have been a better film overall if it had focused more on the females in it as the males are, for the most part, its least watchable characters.  At the same time, the scenes in Aliyah's (all boys) school and the vocational school next door are also very well conceived and shot indeed.  So maybe it's more that the work would have been better served with less of Aliyah and Hamid in the picture; just as Mahnaz would have been better served with less of them in her life!

 

My rating for the film: 8.0  

Stranger Eyes is on the strange side! (Film review)

  

Seen on the screen before the final 2025 Hong Kong

International Film Festival screening I attended 

 

Stranger Eyes (Singapore-Taiwan-France-USA, 2024)

- Yeo Siew Hua, director-scriptwriter

- Starring: Wu Chien Ho, Lee Kang Sheng, Anicca Panna, Pete Teo

- Part of the HKIFF's Cinephile Paradise program 

 

While the Hong Kong International Film Festival was in progress, two friends and I discussed our fest picks. Upon hearing that Stranger Eyes was among my selections, one of them jokingly asked me, "Are you sure?  Lee Kang Sheng's in it!"  Whereby I pointed out that although he's been in a number of films I've disliked (including Goodbye, Dragon Inn and I Don't Want To Sleep Alone), all of them had been directed by Tsai Ming Liang -- unlike this one!

 

Post viewing this Yeo Siew Hua directorial effort, however, I must say that I get the sense that Tsai Ming Liang is a filmmaker that this work's helmer admires though; and not just because of the Singaporean director-scriptwriter having got Tsai Ming Liang's favourite actor to appear in his movies.  Among other things, the slow and methodical pacing appears to be influenced by Tsai Ming Liang too; and ditto re the film's improvisational style, which lends it a quirkiness and unpredictability that seems rather, if I were to culturally stereotype, un-Singaporean!

 

Despite being a multi-national co-production, Stranger Eyes' setting is entirely in Singapore though.  Also recognisably Singaporean are elements such as the film's focus being on individuals who live in apartments -- one group in a three-generational household, the other in a two-generational one.   

 

Initially, Stranger Eyes centers on the former.  Junyang (played by Wu Chien Ho) and Peiying (portrayed by Annica Panna), their baby and his mother (who comes in the form of the un-grandmotherly appearing Vera Chen) live together in an apartment.  Or, rather, did -- as baby Bo has disappeared.  One moment, she was at a playground with Junyang.  Then, when his attention was focused elsewhere, she seemingly vanished from sight.      

In an apartment in a block facing their apartment live supermarket manager Wu (portrayed by Lee Kang Sheng) and his elderly mother.  Unbeknownst to Junyang and Peiying, their paths have crossed with Wu -- who, it turns out, has been effectively surveilling them at work and from his home; in part because he is fascinated by Peiying, seemingly in part out of boredom and, also, because it's easy enough to do!      

For reasons that never seem to have been made clear, Wu decides to drop off DVDs of recordings of his surveillance "work" at the home of Junyang, Peiying and co.  Whereupon the young couple -- and Officer Zheng (played by Malaysian actor-singer-composer Pete Teo), the cop investigating the disappearance of baby Bo -- get to suspecting that Wu may have kidnapped their young child.  

A strange psychological thriller-drama, not least in that much of the psychological dispositions and quirks of everyone concerned seems to be left to interpretation, Stranger Eyes was most interesting to me in terms of showing the surveillance devices and opportunities to observe others that various people, police but also civilians, neighbours and strangers have at their disposal in today's world.  Videos taken on phones and surveillance cameras are utilized but we also see how, and how much of themselves, people reveal on social media and such.  And how people can stay anonymous in crowds or when in uniform or just carrying out the kind of work and duties so routine that folks barely notice the person doing them.

 

Ironically, even while the people in Stranger Eyes are shown doing things, we actually don't hear them speaking, never mind actually qualitatively conversing, all that much.  So is the message of the movie that we can see but still not understand others around us, including those we live in close proximity to?  Maybe.  For the director -- rather frustratingly to my mind -- appears to have sought to keep his cards close to his chest as well as not wear his heart on his sleeve! 

 

My rating for this film: 6.5

An American Pastorale is far more American nightmare than dream (Film screening)

TV journalist turned documentary filmmaker Auberi Edler

listening to questions at the post-screening Q&A   

 

An American Pastorale (France, 2024)

- Auberi Edler, director, scriptwriter and cinematographer

- Part of the HKIFF's Documentary Competition program 

 

Back in the 19th century, French diplomat-historian Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America after spending 10 months in the United States of America.  Now in the 21st century, French TV journalist turned documentary filmmaker Auberi Edler spent around that amount of time in a small conservative American town (actually, technically, borough) and has produced An American Pastorale, a documentary that could be said to show how democracy in America dies.

 

In March 2023, a year long electoral campaign began to elect the school board of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania (as opposed to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the setting for Cameron Crowe's 2005 romantic comedy, Elizabethtown!).  As Republican and Democrat candidates went from door to door canvasing voters, Auberi Edler's camera was there to follow and record them.

 

Non-interventionist, offering neither narration nor commentary, Auberi Edler quietly captured on camera how a schoolboard election devolves into culture wars whose strands included book censorship, gun control and the undue influence of organized religion (and, in Elizabethtown, one evangelical church in particular) in people's lives and general politics.  In school classrooms, churches, private homes and pretty much elsewhere in between, people of various political stripes -- all of whom are uniformly white in terms of their ethnicity though (note: I've checked and Elizabethtown really does have very few non-white residents) -- are filmed revealing their private as well as public thoughts and in so doing, reveal so much about themselves, their hometown and their country.

 

An American Pastorale had its world premiere -- shortly after the American Presidential Election last year but before Donald Trump returned to the White House -- at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (where Auberi Edler came away with the Best Director prize).  At the time of my writing this review, it has yet to be screened in the USA.  (Indeed, it was only a few days ago that the North American distribution rights for it were sold.)  

 

Based on its title, one might have thought that the natural/target audience for this documentary would be Americans.  But an American friend who saw it (here in Hong Kong) told me it had made her cringe and another friend, upon my telling her about the film, told me she didn't think she could stomach viewing it; this particular because she actually personally knew someone from Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania!

 

Despite not being an American myself, I understand.  An American Pastorale is not an easy watch for those who don't like seeing bigotry triumph, thanks in part to how ineffectual, even downright lame and weak, the opposition to far-right white nationalism in Christian clothing was (and is).  Put another way: pretty much everyone seen in this quietly devastating cinema vérité-style documentary -- by a filmmaker who knows very well that, often, it's best to just let a person incriminate themself -- does not come off looking good.  And their country too!

 

Those who know me know that I absolutely hate people talking in cinemas.  But I have to confess: I found myself commenting aloud about, and in response to, certain statements and declarations made, seemingly seriously, by Elizabethtown residents -- and recorded for posterity in the documentary -- that just came across as so crazily asinine!  (As an example, a gun lover talked about the possibility of Hamas going over to attack this rural American community!)      

On a positive note: it's an incredible achievement on the part of Auberi Edler that she managed to get the people in the documentary to seemingly forget that her camera was trained on them, and their every word being recorded.  To be sure, some of them did appear to be performing for the camera -- as well as an audience of their peers -- some of the time.  But more fool them, for thinking that they would be made to look good in this thoroughly thought-provoking work which, actually, lays waste to whatever myths and delusions of grandeur that Americans would ever have about themselves and their country, for the world to see!

 

My rating for this film: 8.5

A documentary entitled Never Too Late, and another showing his people's freedom came too late for its titular subject to enjoy! (Film reviews)

  

 People in focus (including director Rikki Choy (2nd from left),

producer Miney Ye (3rd from left) and main song singer 

Gigi Leung (on the far right) at Never Too Late's world premiere 

Never Too Late (Hong Kong, 2025)

- Rikki Choy, director

- Part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program 

 

It used to be that one could look forward to quite a few films having their world premieres at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. This year, however, there are just six of them -- with even its Opening Films (including Chong Keat Aun's Pavane for an Infant) having had their world premieres elsewhere some months ago.  Still, I did catch at least one of them: Never Too Late; a fairly modest and very local documentary produced by Phoenix TV, whose major star power came by way of the song that plays as the end credits roll being performed by singer-actress Gigi Leung.

 

Never Too Late appears to be the feature film directorial debut of Rikki Choy -- and there are aspects of the work that one can't help but think would be handled better by someone with more experience and expertise.  At the same time though, its subject, Hong Kong's natural world and its biodiversity, is something she is familiar with (and looks to have a passion for), having been one of the directors of Phoenix TV’s Hong Kong Nature Stories documentary series.  And ditto re it being something that all of the four individuals whose stories are told in this feature length documentary care very much for in their own way.

 

Human Ip is an artist-poet who has become a farmer and lives in Lai Chi Wo.  Hidy Yu is a model with a love for the sea, who broke up with her partner because she was repulsed by his love for spearfishing.  Fun Hon-shing enjoys what he refers to as "wellness photography" in the wilds of Hong Kong (and is the director of a short film I viewed some time back on the Life (Cycle) of the Hong Kong Newt).  And then there's Anthony Choy, a property agent who likes observing, sketching and painting birds, flowers and many other natural subjects.

Commendably, Never Too Late doesn't shy away from showing such as the contradiction of Anthony Choy's working for a company whose projects could be said to intrude into, and even destroy, some natural habitats and Human Ip being in conflict with some of her neighbors in Lai Chi Wo over their perception and treatment of the feral cows that she loves but others find to be a big nuisance.  We also see that getting too close to nature can result in human pain and animal death.      

In fact, Never Too Late is actually less upbeat overall than its title might imply!  And is less, for want of a better word, propaganda-like than one might expect, given it having the support of official, including government, organizations. It additionally presents a more complex picture than may seem to be the case at first glance; with there being certain social undercurrents that aren't explicitly commented upon -- or are mentioned or alluded to only in passing -- yet are evidently there if you know where to look for them.  

 

In some ways, this mirrors one's experiences with the natural world in Hong Kong: in that, it's actually more pervasive and around you than many may realize; yet it does take a bit of digging, change of perspective and/or wandering and veering off the beaten path, in order to see of it!  Also, no, it's not perfect -- the natural world, Hong Kong itself and the film -- but, all in all, its existence still is worth appreciating. 

 

My rating for this film: 7.0

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (U.S.A.-France, 2024)

- Raoul Peck, director-scriptwriter-producer

- LaKeith Stanfield, voice cast

 

There are two filmmakers who I know served as their countries' Minister of Cultures for a time.  They also happen to be filmmakers whose films I've been bowled over by.  I considered South Korea's Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy (1999) and Oasis (2002) to be masterpieces.  I feel the same way about Haiti's Raoul Peck's Lumumba (2000) and I Am Not Your Negro (2016).  Thus it was that Raoul Peck being the director of Ernest Cole: Lost and Found was what got me determined to watch this documentary work; not my having any prior knowledge of its subject.  

The story of South African photographer Ernest Cole is one I found moving.  A pioneering black photographer who was born in 1940, he lived through Apartheid and documented it; then moved to New York City to try to escape from it, only to encounter difficulties there, lose his way and, eventually, lose his life -- sadly before Apartheid came to an end, so he never saw Nelson Mandela and his country free.

 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found has interview footage of its titular character.  But we actually see far more of his photographs than his visage in the documentary.  Black and white photographs that show a cruelly segregated world; one where the whites were privileged and thoroughly aware of it, and the blacks oppressed in ways that look designed to break the spirit as well as hearts.

 

Ernest Cole left South Africa in 1966.  Having secreted his photographs of South Africa under Apartheid with him, he was able to publish House of Bondage: A South African Black Man Exposes in His Own Pictures and Words the Bitter Life of His Homeland Today.  Sadly, to judge by what I saw in the film, he never really was able to produce as good work outside of his home country as he did in it.  It seems that some of his work was lost; as was he.   

 

Perhaps not coincidentally, it feels like Ernest Cole: Lost and Found also lost its way somewhat midway through.  I consequently found the latter half of the film to not be as compelling as the first half.  Even the bombshell revelation late in the documentary that a collection of 60,000 negatives was found at a bank vault in Stockholm in 2017 and given to his heirs leaves more questions, and feelings of dissatisfaction than any sense of joy or relief.  

I must say though that the end dedication to people in exile everywhere emotionally impacted me quite a bit though -- as it got me thinking of exiled Hongkongers who left because they didn't feel they could be safe in their home city and/or chaffed at the injustice that exists in it, yet left their heart here even while they moved thousands of miles to try to make a new life in a different continent.

 

My rating for this film: 6.0

The 2025 Hong Kong International Film Festival has begun, along with my personal HKIFF-ing! (Film reviews)

  

At the Hong Kong premiere of one of the 2025 Hong Kong 

International Film Festival's Opening Films

 

Pavane for an Infant's lead actress Fish Liew and director 

Chong Keat Aun on stage before the screening
 

Pavane for an Infant (Malaysia-Hong Kong, 2024)

- Chong Keat Aun, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Fish Liew, Natalie Hsu, Tan Mei Ling, Pearlly Chua, Ben Yuen 

- Part of the HKIFF's Gala Presentations program 

 

At the Hong Kong International Film Festival last year, Chong Keat Aun's Snow in Midsummer was named the winner of the Firebird award best film for young cinema competition (Chinese-language).  When speaking to a couple of Hong Kong filmmakers after one of its HKIFF screenings, I got the distinct sense that they were impressed by the Malaysian drama about one of the country's taboo subjects, the "race riots" that occured on May 13th, 1969.  

 

The impression that the Malaysian director's become quite the darling among Hong Kong film folk increased this year with the selection of his Pavane for an Infant as one of the Opening Films of this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.  And with Chong Keat Aun's third film having a number of Hongkongers among its cast and crew (including actress Natalie Hsu and cinematographer Leung Ming-kai).    

 

Despite her making her name in Hong Kong cinema, lead actress Fish Liew actually hails from Malaysia.  But because she had to be in Hong Kong for so many years already, she reportedly struggled initially to get back to speaking Cantonese like a native Malaysian Cantonese speaker rather than a Hong Kong one!  And it's very much to her credit that she not only does this in Pavane for an Infant but, also, speaks too in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mandarin; something that her character, a worker at a baby hatch who interacts with Malaysians of other ethnicities as well as her own does.

 

Lai Sum (portrayed by Fish Liew)'s colleagues include Malay women and her boss is a ethnic Chinese woman (essayed by Tan Mei Ling) who's a practicing Muslim.  Among the women seen using the baby hatch are an ethnic Indian Hindu woman as well as ethnic Chinese ones; and among the adoptees of the abandoned babies are a Malay Muslim family.  Chong Keat Aun's film further showcases Malaysia's multi-ethnic, -cultural and -religious society and beliefs by including such as a Minangkabau ceremony celebrating a new female addition to the matrilineal society, and a Taoist medium (played by Hong Kong actor Ben Yuen).

 

At one level, the female friendships and various other demonstrations of female solidarity that course through Pavane for an Infant paint a positive picture of Malaysian society.  On the other hand, the fact that there are so many abandoned babies that the existence of baby hatches have become institutionalised, even if still opposed by certain strands of society, is, of course, less so.  And most definitely when many of the abandoned babies -- and abortions spoken about in the film (which actually are illegal in Malaysia) -- come as a result of rape and such.

 

As such, this is another one of Chong Keat Aun's films that I get the feeling will only be allowed to be screened in his native Malaysia after a number of cuts are made by the censors.  Which is a pity as he actually addresses important, relevant social and cultural issues in sensitive and thought-provoking ways; even though, I must admit, I could do without the "magical realistic" stylistic touches -- along with leisured pace -- that he does seem to be fond of too! 

 

My rating for this film: 7.5 

The Invasion (The Netherlands-France-U.S.A., 2024)

-  Sergei Loznitsa, director and scriptwriter

- Part of the HKIFF's Auteurs program

 

Despite Ukraine not being listed among countries that co-produced this documentary film, it's the country that's the focus of it.  Ukranian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa's also was shot entirely in the Eastern European country that has Russia invaded in February 2022 and is still very much a nation at war at the time of writing.

 

Unlike, say, Eastern Front, which I viewed at the 2023 Hong Kong International Film Festival, The Invasion doesn't have footage of battle.  But the war and enemy, and its effect on Ukranians, is very much apparent in this documentary which begins with an extended take of the funeral of a number of fallen soldiers that includes footage of their being mourned in a cathedral and, also, at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kyiv's Independence Square.

 

Over the course of the 145 documentary, a number of other funerals are also shown -- and, also, in long takes.  Sergei Loznitsa is obviously determined to show the sacrifices that Ukrainians have made for their country; ones that include the deaths of those who were the beloved spouses, parents, children of others, and respected and valued members of communities.  

 

At the same time, the Ukranians in The Invasion also are shown to be people who are determined to carry on with life even while living with death and destruction, the sound of war not far away and air raid warnings.  People -- soldiers but also civilians of different ages, ranging from elderly folk to young children -- also are seen observing happier ceremonies and times.

 

A cynic might say that The Invasion is a propaganda work, as it shows Ukranians to be enduring, and able to embrace life at a time when they and their country's survival are being threatened.  At the same time though, the price being paid is shown to be terribly high. And the fact that Ukraine has prevailed, is prevailing, more than three years on after Russia attacked and been attacking it, is something very much worth recording and witnessing.

 

My rating for this film: 7.5 

They Shot the Piano Player compares favourably to a number of Oscar-winning works! (Film review)

 

My life in Hong Kong: film festing, and way too ubiquitous 

police presence (See the police van on the 

other side of the road from the HKIFF advertising?) :S

They Shot the Piano Player (Spain-France-The Netherlands-Portugal-Peru-U.K., 2023)

- Fernando Treuba (who's also wrote the script) and Javier Mariscal, directors

- Voice actors: Jeff Goldblum, Tony Ramos, Abel Ayala, Roberta Wallach

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Fetival's Animation Unlimited program 

 

The last animated movie I viewed prior to viewing this multinational offering was Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron (Japan, 2023).  I realise it's unfair to compare these two very different cinematic offerings -- but if I did so, I'd say that I actually liked They Shot the Piano Player better, and am surprised that it didn't even get nominated for the Animated Feature Film Oscar that the Studio Ghibli production won this year.

 

Speaking of Oscar nominated animated works: Persepolis (France-U.S., 2007) is one of three works I got to thinking of when viewing They Shot the Piano Player; with the other two being the non-animated Academy Award winners Searching for Sugar Man (2012) and Missing (1982).  For like Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi's work about a girl growing up in Islamic Revolution-era Iran, this offering from Fernando Teruba and Javier Mariscal is an animated docudrama -- in the latter case, about an American journalist trying to figure out what happened to a musical hero who appeared to have vanished into thin air, a la Searching the Sugar Man's Sixto Rodriguez, in a foreign, South American country similar to the fictional one that's the setting for Costa-Gavras' Missing.

 

It's 2010 and New York music journalist Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) is planning on writing a book about the Brazilian bossa nova craze of the 1960s.  Early on in his research, he comes across a recording featuring the piano playing of Francisco Tenório Júnior and determines to learn more about this Brazilian musical talent.  

 

On research trips to Brazil, Jeff interviews illustrious Brazilian bossa nova musicians like Gilberto Gil, João Donato and Chico Buarque (voicing themselves in the movie) about their music, and memories of Tenório Júnior.  At some point, he changes the subject of his planned book to the piano player whose music, life and mysterious disappearance back in 1976 he has become well nigh obsessed with.  And eventually, he is able to piece together the tragic story of a much beloved musician and man who went missing while on tour in then dictator-ruled Argentina -- leaving behind a wife, children, mistress and many friends mourning his disappearance from their lives.

 

At one level, They Shot the Piano Player is a enthralling dramatic investigation into what happened to a piano player who look to have unwittingly got involved in South American politics, to his great detriment.  At another, it's a chilling indictment of totalitarian regimes and their state terrorism -- which, in South America, led, among other tragedies, to the "disappearance" tens of thousands of people, many, if not all, of them innocents.  At the same time, it's also a beautifully hand-drawn work that's a thoroughly affecting celebration of bossa nova, and the life of Tenório Júnior.

 

It is very much to its makers' credit that they attempted to do so much, and succeeded in doing so.  A feast for the eyes and ears, this work -- which also happens to be tri-lingual (English, Portuguese and Spanish) -- is also heart-breaking and heart-warming at different parts of its story -- which, it is worth emphasizing, is, at heart, non-fiction. (The fictional bit comes from the man who became obsessed with the story of Tenório Júnior -- so much so that he kept at it for some two decades! -- being not Jeff Harris but the film's co-director and scriptwriter, Fernando Trueba -- and instead of writing a book about the Brazilian musician, he made They Shot the Piano Player!)

My rating for this film: 9.0

Oasis of Now is the kind of fest film that can send audience members to sleep! (Film review)

The Hong Kong International Film Festival is one of

Hong Kong's premier cultural events

 

Oasis of Now (Malaysia-Singapore-France, 2023)

- Chia Chee Sum, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Ta Thi Dju, Aster Yeow Ee, Abdul Manaf bin Rejab

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Global Vision program

 

There's been many a year where I've not seen a Malaysian offerings at a Hong Kong film festival.  However, in the past year or so, both the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (HKAFF) and now the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) have featured Malaysian movies in their program.  But while Amanda Nell Eu's Tiger Stripes and Jin Ong's Abang Adik went on to get Hong Kong theatrical releases after the HKAFF, I can't see this happening for Chia Chee Sum's Oasis of Now; this not least because this spare, slow-paced effort comes across as the kind of work that can be appreciated only by film festival audiences, if that!

 

Oasis of Now revolves around Hanh (portrayed by Ta Thi Dju), a casually multi-lingual female who is gradually revealed to be an undocumented Vietnamese immigrant doing odd jobs for different residents of an old housing estate where the film's director-scriptwriter used to live. She also turns out to be the mother of a young girl called Ting Ting (played by Aster Yeow Ee), with whom she occasionally meets up, and hangs out, with in a stairwell of the housing estate; something that's not immediately clear because, among other things, when we first see Ting Ting, she is being treated as a daughter by another woman.

Very little is explicitly spelled out in Oasis of Now; and this can lend proceedings an intriguing air of mystery.  Initially, I was fine to go with the flow and spend time observing what the filmmaker chose to impart more by way of the film's atmospheric cinematography and sound engineering than narrative plotting.  But after a period, I found myself looking wishing for more clarity with regards to a number of details.  

 

Also, I found it difficult to figure out how much time had passed in the movie -- for even while Hanh's wardrobe never seemed to change and night didn't seem to dawn in the film, it did seem that some days must have passed to accomodate all the things that went on in the story.  Even more problematically, I found myself unable to resist checking my watch more than once to see how much time had passed and was left before this minimalist movie ended.  In addition, I found myself wanting to look around the cinema to gauge the reactions of my fellow audience members -- over the course of which I saw that a number had nodded off mid-viewing!

 

All in all, I think it's fair to conclude that I don't think many in the audience were captivated or enthralled by this movie that also feels far more emotionally distant than it could and should have been. And it's indeed so that I didn't find Oasis of Now particularly to be my taste.  More specifically, I think of it as yet another entry from a school of Malaysian cinema that looks to have been overly inspired by Tsai Ming Liang (who, for those who didn't realise, is Malaysian born) in my not so humble opinion.  

 

To be sure, I've been okay with a few such efforts (like Woo Min Jin's Days of Turquoise Sky, which I viewed at the 2008 Hong Kong International Film Festival).  However, I've not cared for a number of others, including one by Tsai himself that I viewed at the 2007 Hong Kong International Film Festival: I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, which, actually, may be the cinematic effort that holds the record for sending the most audience members to sleep that I've ever seen at the Hong Kong International Film Festival!

 

My rating for this film: 5.0