Tony Takitani (トニー滝谷, Jun Ichikawa, 2004)

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Do we wear the clothes, or is it more like the clothes wear us? There is something haunting about the sense of absence contained within an outfit that no longer has a body to wrap itself around, as if it were the flesh remaining long after the spirit has departed. This is, in a way, how the titular Tony Takitani (Issey Ogata) comes of see them, as shadows of his now departed wife never to be inhabited again.

Adapting a short story by Haruki Murakami, Jun Ichikawa maintains a gentle lateral motion of the camera as he proceeds through Tony’s early life as if we were gradually unrolling scroll painting. The motion seems to come to a stop on Tony’s unexpected marriage to a woman 15 years younger than himself who was already seeing another man when he proposed to her after only five dates. For a time, his life of loneliness comes to an end, if giving way to an anxiety that he will not be able to bear being alone again. The only cloud in his otherwise blissfully happy life is that Eiko (Rie Miyazawa) has an obsession with clothes that is not only a financial drain but potentially unhealthy. 

Tony himself says it’s as if she was born to wear them, as if Eiko existed solely to be the soul within the fabric. She says that the clothes, in turn, fill a hole inside her. It’s like an addiction. Tony asks her if she really “needs” so many, and she accepts that perhaps she doesn’t, but in other ways the clothes to her are something without which she cannot survive in the same way she could not survive without food or water. Tony’s mere asking her if she would consider reining her spending in is akin to breaking the spell, asking her to reject the very thing she is which may not be so different from dying anyway.

After her death, Tony hires another woman, Hisako (also played by Rie Miyazawa), to wear his late wife’s clothes clumsily explaining that seeing this simulacrum of Eiko will finally convince him that she is gone. Another being is now inhabiting the clothes, filling the void where Eiko once was. On seeing the room full of orphaned outfits, Hisako breaks down in tears. She tells Tony that she has never seen so many beautiful clothes and is overwhelmed by the sight. But perhaps she too is affected by this space that has become a manifestation of loneliness and the unfillable void that exists within us all. 

Tony’s void was perhaps forged by his lonely childhood. His mother died not long after his birth, and his father (also played by Issey Ogata) was a jazz trombonist ill suited to fatherhood who was always on the road. He gave him his unusual name anticipating an era of American dominance, but mostly it brought him nothing other than loneliness and isolation. Though he has made a successful career for himself as an illustrator, some say that his drawings lack warmth hinting at his inability, or perhaps lack of desire, to connect with other people before meeting Eiko.

Ichikawa too employs this distancing effect in having the tale narrated by an anonymous third party with the actors breaking in to speak a few lines of their own while trapped within a kind of dreamscape in which they are isolated and alone. The muted colour palette similarly hints at the colourlessness of Tony’s existence without the possibility of human connection. The ambiguous conclusion is either a tragedy or sign or new possibilities as Tony appears to want to reach out once again, but finds his call unanswered. Perhaps he will try another time, or otherwise remain mired in loneliness longing for connection but continually denied. In any case, Ichikawa’s film has a kind of elliptical quality, a poetic cycle of grief and longing that is at once filled with melancholy and enduring sadness but also a kind of transcendence in the rare moments in which two people fully connect no matter how brief or fleeting they may turn out to be.

Once Upon a Time in the Middle East (欢迎来龙餐馆, Wen Muye, 2026)

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Culinary comedies are a staple of the Chinese holiday movie which often revolve around the importance of family and the bonds that can be generated through the sharing of a meal. FunAge is similarly known for zany comedies, though their output has become a little more serious of late. In Once Upon a Time in the Middle East (欢迎来龙餐馆, Huānyíng lái Lóng Cānguǎn), Wen Muye subverts many of these conventions in marketing the movie as a fish-out-of-water comedy starring comic actor Shen Teng as a debt-ridden chef who takes a job in the Middle East in the early 2000s for the high pay, only to suddenly plunge him into a war zone.

One can open a mouth with a spoon as well a gun, Xu Fu (Shen Teng) later reflects having reaffirmed for himself that the most important things in life are good food and raising children well. The irony is that on being introduced to Zaid (Sherif Sobhy), a civil servant and owner of Loong Restaurant where Xu is to be employed, Xu is told that his food does suit the local tastes, but he insists on cooking authentic Chinese cuisine rather Chinese-American fusion food. He says he’ll walk if he’s asked to cook bowdlerised dishes like General Tso’s Chicken, but is later forced to do so to curry favour with an American officer, having been incarcerated in a military prison after being accused of being party to an act of terrorism.

The early part of the film is indeed fiercely critical of the Americans whose involvement in the Middle East is depicted as a thinly veiled war of aggression for imperial conquest mitigated as an act of revenge. Political figures are seen on television making ultimatums about regime change before the tanks start rolling in, while the American soldiers act with undue brutality and entitlement. They insist that the children Xu takes in after their orphanage is bombed are all terrorists or soon will be, and therefore fair game targets that should be neutralised to stop the spread of violence. But it’s clear that the War on Terror is simply breeding more “terrorists” as orphaned children are radicalised and exploited by extremists who recruit them as child soldiers and later force them to become suicide bombers without their knowledge or consent.

Xu, by contrast, takes a local boy under his wing and attempts to train him as a chef as a means of pulling him away from the destructive desire for vengeance. The ideological conflict plays out in the heart of Saif (Omar Sherif) as he’s pulled between the fatherly influence of Xu and that of the extremists who sell stories of glorious battles, but in reality send children out to die. Xu hopes that by training Saif as a chef, he can prevent him from becoming radicalised and prepare him for the world to come after the war, but finds himself frustrated by the circumstances that surround him. Meanwhile, he too is corrupted by the promise of wealth that can come with war by setting up a side business smuggling alcohol into this country where drinking is forbidden in order to sell to American servicemen and later turning the restaurant into a kind of speak easy for foreigners remaining in the war-torn city.

After challenging an American soldier who complained about his circumstances that it is largely their own fault for waging this war, Xu has to admit that he has profited from it and is only able to make this kind of money because of the conflict. As an older man, he admits he stayed too long because he got greedy, preferring to stay and make more money long after paying off his debts. He often says that this war is nothing to do with him, though as he’s later questioned, if his partner was involved in terrorism and his friend was the victim, he can’t really claim not to be involved which seems like a fairly subversive comment on China’s business and foreign policy. Nevertheless, the film ends with a reminder that China is working with other nations to enact the UN Convention on the Human Rights of the Child, while it is children who are the primary victims of war. 

Xu becomes friends with a Chinese-American soldier of Malaysian-Chinese heritage (Aarif Rahman) who is conflicted about the war which is not really anything to do with him personally, just as it’s nothing to with Xu, the children, or even really Zaid who is forced to buy cancer drugs from an American serviceman who is exploiting him financially while claiming that he just wants to help him save his little girl. They’re all at the mercy of wider geopolitical machinations that set people who once got along peacefully against each other. Though the film may in some senses have a strong “we were never friends” mentality echoing that of Dead to Rights and suggesting once again that Chinese citizens are only safe in China, it does also make the case for a more positive path to better global relations through friendly cultural exchange as evidenced by the fusion food that Xu creates in the most difficult of circumstances which seems to have sustained those he left behind to make better futures for themselves away from hate and violence.

Once Upon a Time in the Middle East is in US and Canadian cinemas now courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Fruit Gathering (သစ်သီးခူး, Aung Phyoe, 2026)

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A young factory worker becomes infatuated with a new hire, but can never be sure if their friendship is genuine or essentially transactional in Aung Phyoe’s sensitive drama, Fruit Gathering (သစ်သီးခူး). San Kyi’s (Nandar Myat Aung) life is in many ways defined by risk aversion. While the consequences of speaking her feelings may be severe in a culture in which such relationships are not fully accepted, she is also hemmed in by financial precarity and the fear of losing her job while finding work in Yangon proves increasingly difficult with an influx of those of fleeing violence and destruction in the countryside seeking employment in the city.

This might be one reason she continues to idolise her rural childhood as symbolised by the idea of fruit picking while one of many migrating to the city in search of work in the wake of her father’s abandonment. San Kyi’s mother has already sold their farm to fund her business as a labour broker helping workers find positions abroad and now wants to sell their family’s home much to the grandmother’s disappointment. Still living with her mother and grandmother, San Kyi also sees her job as a seamstress in a textile factory as a path to freedom and independence even if her mother looks down on her occupation and she’s relentlessly oppressed and exploited at work.

In fact, she first meets Theint (Nandar Myint Lwin) while being berated by the forewoman who accuses her of having taken an unauthorised bathroom break. Theint lies and says she saw her talking to her supervisor, signalling both a rebellious streak and also a casual disregard for her employment prospects which stand in stark contrast to San Kyi’s caution. San Kyi refuses to sign the other women’s petition for better working conditions out of fear of losing her job, setting her at odds with her colleagues in effectively siding with management and sabotaging their chances of gaining fair treatment. While her colleague insists they should fight for their rights, San Kyi would rather stay quiet.

Her caution is reflected in her unspoken longing for Theint, though the extent to which Theint may return these feelings is never quite clear. She appears to exploit San Kyi’s feelings for her in asking to borrow a large sum of money she says is for her mother in the country but perhaps not actually planning to pay her back. Theint abruptly drops out of contact, only to explain that she’s married a man and has to follow him to the rubber plantation where he works. When Theint’s husband finds work abroad, it provides a temporary haven of togetherness and a new sense of possibility for San Kyi who begins to dream that the two of them might be able to build new lives together in another country as migrant workers. 

Theint, however, repeatedly tells her to stop dreaming and be more realistic. She does not appear to believe in the kind of better future that San Kyi clings to and all her decisions are motivated by financial survival. Theint takes advantage of her connections with San Kyi’s mother and the taxi driver she wants her daughter to marry leading to a hilarious misunderstanding as her mother accuses San Kyi of being “jealous” of Theint, suddenly staking a claim on the taxi driver whose currency has risen now another woman has shown an interest little knowing that the reverse is true. Even her mother’s attempts to marry San Kyi off have a transactional quality in being motivated by her own desire for financial gain in no longer wanting to live with her daughter.

To that extent, San Kyi’s longing takes on a purer quality but equally as the film implies is rendered impossible in the world in which she lives in which love is a luxury few can afford. Gradually, she begins to turn her rage inward, sabotaging her relationship with Theint due to her jealously and insecurity and injuring herself at work while preoccupied about her love her life. Romantic and economic freedoms go hand in hand, while San Kyi continues to pine for an idealised pastorality outside of the city in the place where she grew up. Nevertheless, her life seems to improve after separating from her mother, getting a new job, and meeting new people even if her love for Theint lingers as an unresolved memory. The film’s boxy 4:3 ratio echoes the ways in which San Kyi is continually constrained, able to find true release only in pastoral fantasy and ancient ritual.

Fruit Gathering screens 14th/15th October as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Inherit (คุณยายวรนาฏ, Banjong Pisanthanakun, 2026)

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Playing out as something between Teorema and An Inspector Calls, Banjong Pisanthanakun’s Inherit (คุณยายวรนาฏ) asks its audience to suspend their disbelief to an unusual extent, but certainly takes those willing to go with it on a wild ride from ancient curses and super monks to corporate coverups, social inequality, and the moral corruptions at the heart of a seemingly “nice” upper-middle-class family. In fact, the more you learn about this incredibly compromised group of people, the harder it is not to start rooting for the malevolent centipede entity even if she does seem to kill and feast on beautiful young women in order to preserve her youthful appearance. 

At least, one has to wonder why no one explores rational explanations for the arrival of a glamorous woman claiming to be the family’s estranged octogenarian great aunt, Woranart (Davika Hoorne), seeing as she looks about 35. Everyone just seems to take her explanation that she’s undergone every anti-ageing and plastic surgery option going and they’ve all gone swimmingly at face value. Then again, perhaps you really can look this good when you have seemingly infinite funds at your disposal. For some reason, it never occurs to the family that she might just a young person trying to take advantage of them financially or get revenge for one of their many transgressions, the most public of which is a scandal surrounding a chemical leak from father Olan’s (Trin Settachoke) factory that they covered up after it caused sickness, death, and birth abnormalities in the surrounding community.

Olan is, however, the only one who thinks there’s something not right about Woranart and correctly guesses that only black magic could make a supposedly elderly woman look far younger than her middle-aged niece, Sudaduang (Sinjai Plengpanich). Woranart’s glamorous appearance further undermines Sudaduang’s self-confidence, leaving her wondering if she too should try plastic surgery while otherwise insecure in her relationships with husband and sons. She evidently had a strained relationship with her mother whose funeral the family had travelled to attend. The other attendees gossip that Sudaduang was not a good daughter while her mother was alive, putting her in what they call “a nuthouse”, while giving a glowing eulogy. Sudaduang had been close to Woranart in her childhood and therefore may feel a desire to reconnect with her now that her mother has passed away. 

Woranart, however, shows more interest in the family’s daughter Oui (Thitiya Jirapornsilp) who is first seen guzzling pills at the funeral and is kept on a tight leash by Sudaduang having apparently suffered a series of childhood illnesses. In some ways, it’s easy for Woranart to seduce her by offering her the sense of freedom and impending adulthood that’s denied her by her mother. Meanwhile, as Woranart seems to worry away at the family’s secrets, Oui has fewer reasons to reject the supposed “demon” given what she’s just found out about her father and brothers who may well be the “real villains” she describes them as. Woranart makes cryptic comments that it’s time for Oui to become “a real woman”, and much of the battle seems to be for Oui’s soul as she’s faced with a choice of whether she’s going to continue to go along with her family’s wealth and privilege despite knowing what she knows, or accept Woranart’s “gift” and a life without pain or suffering. 

On her arrival, Woranart had had all the Buddhist statues removed from the cottage on the family’s estate where they put her up, telling Oui that she doesn’t believe in karma because it’s “too slow”. That may suggest she’s come here with a mission of revenge after all, and it is later revealed that the centipede deity has held a grudge against Sudaduang’s family for over 800 years, though no one can remember why. She does seem to be intent on destroying them, but then again some might say they deserve it and were in the process of destroying themselves anyway. Nevertheless, it’s Oui who is finally left to decide what exactly she wants to “inherit”, neatly inverting the logic of the Western slasher along with that of a conservative society to claim her own agency. Anchored by a perfectly pitched performance from Davika Hoorne as the alluring great aunt / foxy 800-year-old demon meeting her match in a vengeful nun (Warattaya Nilkuha), Banjong Pisanthanakun’s take on this classic tale is an absolute riot that never forgets its feminist heart.

Inherit screens 9th/10th October as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (Josef Kubota Wladyka, 2026)

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Sooner or later, the dance must end. Like Taichi Kimura’s Fujiko, Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! is a story inspired by and dedicated to the director’s mother featuring a bold visual style that harks back to the 1970s. A character study in grief, it is also an exploration of the dance between languages, the connection between motion and emotion, and the slow waltz we do with grief as a means of letting go.

Part of the reason that Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) cannot move forward, however, is that she is prevented from performing the culturally specific death ritual that would help her to so because it directly conflicts with the prevailing mores of her husband’s Mexican background. There are cultural and perhaps religious reasons that the family cannot accept the idea of his being cremated, but equally there is some territorial push and pull over who the remains ultimately belong to with Luis’ father in particular keen to bring the body “home” to Mexico. Haru, meanwhile, understandably feels that Luis’ home was with her in Japan and she better than anyone knew what his wishes were in the event of his death. In requesting his body, it’s as if his father is denying that she and Luis (Alejandro Edda) were a family or the choice that he had made in coming to Japan. Even so, in this way she must in the end let him go even if that means his spirit cannot really rest in peace and is haunting her in both a spiritual and literal sense.

Really what Haru comes to give Luis at the end is a kind of cremation that signals her decision to set them both free by accepting his death. Before that, however, she must try to find some kind of accommodation with it but largely becomes isolated and mired within her grief. The couple had been keen ballroom dancers, but Haru is unable to dance alone. Ironically, she song she dances to in the opening sequence, Watashi to Watashi by the Peanuts, expresses the idea of there being two people within one person (the Peanuts were a pair of twin sisters) as if Haru were already dating for/with an absent lover. After Luis’ death, she is visited by his ghost inside a cute crow mascot suit that symbolises that grief and sadness that hangs over her life and equally her own inability to let it go.

Her sister and cousin try to get her resume dancing a means of getting her life moving again, but doing so brings her into the presence of Latin dancer Fedir (Alberto Guerra)who on some level reminds her of Luis while her attraction to him simultaneously pulls her away from her late husband. The interplay between the two in her mind is neatly signalled in a fantasy sequence that seems to be an homage to Y tu mamá también, though the situation is as Haru puts it “messy”. Fedir is in an open marriage which is a concept that Haru struggles to understand. She pretends that Luis is still alive and their marriage is “open” too to facilitate a relationship, but at the same time becomes over emotionally invested in Fedir and jealous of his wife despite knowing intellectually that the relationship has no future and that Fedir is not Luis returned.

The situation is primed for an implosion, but as erratic as her behaviour becomes, it does eventually provide Haru with a path out of her grief and the realisation that she will have to let Luis go. Her sister and cousin perhaps preset two opposing poles, Yuki (Yo Yoshida) having been in a stable and conventional marriage for over 20 years with a grown up daughter, while Hiromi (You) has been living abroad in New in York and is enthusiastically playing the field following her divorce. Haru doesn’t necessarily have to choose either in her widowhood, and even in the film’s otherwise joyful conclusion is seen sitting alone in a train carriage with a large, empty space beside her. She has however rediscovered the joy dance, once again dancing alone but finding that others soon join in as she embraces her inner boogie-woogie. Broken with multilingual title cards and playing with interplay between various languages, the film has a playful quality that elides the heaviness of its subject but nevertheless lends true poignancy to its heroine’s gentle waltz with death as she prepares herself to let go of its hand. 

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! screens 10th/11th October as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

A Girl Unknown (无名女孩, Zou Jing, 2026)

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A young woman finds herself continually displaced in the wake of China’s One Child Policy in Zou Jing’s empathetic drama, A Girl Unknown (无名女孩, wúmíng nǚhái). Dedicated to the director’s grandmother, the film sees its heroine pass through three different identities while struggling to find a place for herself and carrying both the trauma of continual abandonment and a sense of hopeless worthlessness that she will never feel loved or wanted but always asked to be grateful for what little she has.

Lin Juan’s first displacement echoes the growing urbanisation and industrialisation of the nation as she’s taken away from her idyllic rural childhood and sent to live with strangers in the city following her father’s sudden death and her mother’s subsequent relationship with another man. It’s clear that Mr Li does not want to accept Juan, but also that her mother A-Hui has few options other than remarriage for economic support. She first considers leaving Juan at a temple, but reconsiders and tries to persuade Mr Li. When she becomes pregnant with his child, however, it becomes clear that she cannot keep Juan and decides to have her adopted by a seemingly childless middle-aged couple in the city. 

No one really explains this to Juan who has no idea that she’s been abandoned. Her adoptive mother Meishuang (Shen Jiani) at first reassures her that her mother will return at the end of the summer holidays while somehow hoping that Juan will get used to living there and stop asking to be taken home. For reasons which later become clear, Meishuang is operating under a maternal fantasy without really considering how difficult it might be to adopt a child of Juan’s age nor how traumatic this displacement may be for her. Meishuang’s husband Wieqiang (Zu Feng) is also not happy about the arrangement and hostile toward to Juan, irritated by her “hillbilly name” and by her presence in their home. At school, meanwhile, she’s bullied by the other children who make fun of her for having come from the country, though it’s Juan who gets into trouble for fighting back. 

Meishuang is, however, kind to Juan and tries to treat her with maternal affection only it isn’t the kind that Juan wants, nor is Juan really the daughter she wanted. Later we come to Juan’s adoption is also, in its way, a result of the One Child Policy, though it appears that she was abandoned once before simply by virtue of being a second daughter born to a family who wanted to hold out for a son. Her birth family tries to reclaim her, but their home is full of photos of the other two siblings who seem to have a close bond while there are obviously none of her. Their home is full of absence, and though they may be related by blood, they are still strangers to each other. Once again she is expected to live up to someone else’s idealised image of a longed for daughter while largely denied a sense of self or a chance to define her own identity. 

While her birth family appear to have become wealthy, Meishuang and Weiqiang are struggling under the economic pressures of the changing ‘90s economy with Weiqiang eventually laid off and made dependent on an old colleague who, unbeknownst to them, sexually abuses Juan partly because he sees her as someone of little consequence owing to being an adopted child. The pain of being unable to speak about what’s happened to her further fuels her resentment and low sense of self-worth believing that she will never be anything more than a disappointing substitute to her adoptive parents. 

After running away and getting a job in a textiles factory, Juan, now going by the name Lian (Li Gengxi), becomes friends with a slightly older woman who is saving money to open a shop in her hometown. Her new friend, however, becomes the subject gossip as the other girls believe she is sleeping with the foreman to get ahead, but in reality the foreman is sexuality exploiting her. Despite her own experience, Juan rejects her too leading to tragic consequences that bear out the ways in which women’s lives have little currency in this oppressively patriarchal social structure. Juan lives under three different names, but in other ways women are seen to be almost interchangeable while Juan herself has no concrete identity. She has, however, perhaps undergone a kind of rebirth and in having uncovered and bared all that was hidden found her way back to herself and a future that is of her own choosing.

A Girl Unknown screens 9th/11th October as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Clip (English subtitles)

V (空枪, Han Yan, 2026)

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Mainland director Han Yan is the latest to tackle the story of notorious Hong Kong gangster Cheung Tze-keung, though unexpectedly his take on the Handover has a more cynical edge than typically seen in this kind of film even if once again branding the mid-90s as a lawless era in which order had all but collapsed as the colonial authorities prepared to withdraw. With his frantic editing and production design, Han does his best to echo the Hong Kong action cinema of the era while characterising the hero as a kind of revolutionary, a Robin Hood figure kicking back against the rise of billionaires amid rampant social inequality. 

Man Tze-keung (Zhu Yilong) describes himself as a farm boy who’s come to Hong Kong in search of a better life following the death of his father. Whatever the truth of that might be, he starts out as a petty crook robbing jewellery shops as a henchmen for corrupt Anti-Triad Squad inspector Wing (Ben Yuen) and his right-hand woman Lady Yu (Kara Wai Ying-hung). When Wing gets pissed off with them over a job and kills one of the guys as a lesson to the others, Keung decides to shoot his shot. Wing makes him an offer he can’t refuse by getting him to play Russian Roulette with his service weapon. Keung pulls the trigger five times and survives, leading to him developing an invincibility complex and believing that he is uniquely blessed by the heavens. The film’s Chinese title “Empty Gun”, however, signals both Keung’s powerlessness and his delusion. Wing always left one chamber empty, meaning that he tricked Keung knowing that the gun wasn’t loaded in the first place.

Nevertheless, it’s the faith in his immortality and a kind of god complex that give Keung the chutzpah he needs to pull off Hong Kong’s biggest ever heist with the help of cardsharp and air stewardess Yuen (Michelle Wai Sze-Nga). The pair marry, but after they’re targeted by the police Yuen seems perpetually terrified, unsure of what her husband is going to do next. Eventually she figures out that Keung is out of his mind. He’ll never be satisfied and will likely continue to do ever more reckless and increasingly public things. After managing to get himself acquitted for the heist, he sues the Hong Kong Police department for wrongful arrest and mistreatment while in custody earning a record payout. His real target, however, is Hong Kong’s richest man, Chan Fai-Yi (Tony Leung Ka-fai), whom he once idolised but then takes against after he runs into him in a men’s bathroom where Chan assumes he was the attendant and didn’t even look at him.

Though it may have started with a desire to be rich, in some ways the money doesn’t seem to matter to Keung. He throws out gold jewellery to the well-wishers at his wedding in his hometown, and after getting the payout for kidnapping Chan’s son, throws the money out in the streets from a helicopter. All of which makes him a kind of folk hero to some, including the triads who eventually come over to his side after he promises them a new revolutionary future in which they can be the ones with money and power rather than men like Chan. Chan makes a point of wearing a cheap wristwatch to make him seem more like an everyman, but secretly has a room full of expensive designer watches in his home as if to signal the vacuity of his wealth. 

The film is rather coy on this front, but Keung’s habit of sniffing with one nostril coupled with his increasing sweatiness seem to hint at a serious cocaine problem which in part explains his mania and delusional sense of invincibility that sees him taunt the police and engage in a homoerotically charged cat and mouse game with Mainland cop Qi (Tan Jianci). Han has an obvious problem in that he will need to end the film in a way that suits the censors, while Cheung Tze-keung’s own end was rather unheroic. Keung tells his wife that he knows there’s a bullet coming for him someday, but he’s confident that he will be able to dodge it when it comes. Nevertheless, it’s like he’s pursued by the missing bullet from Wing’s gun, propelled by a sense of greed and aspiration while gazing at one of the many posters of Chan that line the city. Played out with a grim sense of absurd humour in its continued product placement for pineapple butter buns, Han’s anarchic drama echoes a contemporary, or perhaps timeless, sense of resentment towards those who hoard their ill-gotten gains while simultaneously suggesting all rebellions are doomed to fail as Keung finally begins to realise that his luck may be running out.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Hokusai’s Daughter (おーい、応為, Tatsushi Omori, 2025)

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Is there something a little ironic about the title of Tatsushi Omori’s biographical drama, Hokusai’s Daughter (おーい、応為, Oi, Oui)? The Japanese title is a humorous allusion to how she came by her professional name, but once again the English centres her relationship with her more famous father rather than the woman herself. Yet, in a way, the film does this too in exploring the interplay between Oei’s own artistic ambitions, her father’s legacy, and the patriarchal society within which she lives.

By 1820, which is when the film begins, Oei (Masami Nagasawa) has already given up artistry to get married, but ends up leaving her husband, claiming that she couldn’t stand his terrible paintings. According to her, the reason they were so bad was because of her husband’s cynical mindset which manifested itself in dull, emotionally unengaging work, though perhaps it was more that she saw the man she had grown tired of reflected in his mediocre paintings which were never going to live up to her father’s or indeed her own. Returning to her father’s rubbish-strewn shack, Oei then faces the choice of whether to get married again or resume her artistic career. She seems to have a crush on the current top painter in Edo who is young and not bad looking, though perhaps it’s being the best artist that attracts her more than anything else. In any case, he is not romantically interested in her and tries to let her down gently, all of which just makes it worse for Oei. When her father Tetsuzo (Masatoshi Nagase), otherwise known as Hokusai, retrieves the hair pin she dropped in the well while preparing to meet the object of her affection, she tells him that she doesn’t want it back signalling her decision to give up on the idea of marriage and devote herself to painting.

Yet, the film is a little ambivalent on her decision, strongly implying that she is lying when she says she’s not lonely and must necessarily have a degree of regret in having rejected romantic fulfilment rather than allowing her to simply be fulfilled by her art. In this way, the pet dog that she adopts becomes a child substitute, rather than just a domestic companion. On the other hand, her unconventional personality and masculine behaviour mark her out as an outsider in Edo-era society who cannot really fit into any other milieu than the artistic. Tetsuzo keeps trying to kick her out because he thinks he’s stopping her from leading a more conventional life as a woman, before finally realising that wouldn’t suit her and giving Oei her own artist’s name as a seal of approval on her career as an artist.

Tetsuzo is however cantankerous and emotionally distant, unwilling to visit his younger daughter who is seriously ill seemingly because he doesn’t want to face the emotional reality of her impending death. Oei is not so diffident and more willing to confront her emotions head on as symbolised by her fascination with fire. When a samurai comes calling to commission a painting on behalf of his lord and becomes irate with Hokusai’s continued refusals, Oei calls his bluff by suggesting he attack her with his sword if he’s really serious about stabbing someone while her father looks on in silence. In some ways, the samurai is even less free than she is as he can hardly go back to his lord, tell him Hokusai said no, and expect to keep his life, so this gamble is all he really has left. Hokusai, however, resents both the samurai’s crass attempts to wave his money in his face and the entitled privilege of the samurai class in general who think they can order him about as they see fit.

Tetsuzo’s poor business sense as an artist is another of his quirks which simultaneously sees him painting pictures of famous actors Oei thinks are not among his best work, and living in an absolute poverty that leaves him constantly moving from one rundown shack to another until leaving the city completely. Though it’s true that Oei is his longest serving disciple, it’s clear that most of her artistic development takes places while he is off on one of his travels that can last several years. When he suddenly returns as a much older man, he remarks that Oei now has her own style, perhaps as an acknowledgement that she has in some ways surpassed him in coming into her own as an artist while his time is coming to a close. Even so, the implication is that it would not have been possible for Oei to become a professional painter had she not had a famous father who approved of her talent, and that an artistic career would not have been open to her as a married woman in the repressively patriarchal Edo-era society. Using mostly natural light, Omori echoes the light and shade in Oei’s work as she begins to seek out not only a style that is distinctly her own, but a way of living as an outsider in a regimentally ordered society.

Hokusai’s Daughter screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Snowball on a Sunny Day (金多寶, Philip Yung Chi-Kwong, 2026)

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Philip Yung isn’t the first person you think of when it comes to Lunar New Year Comedies. His previous films have largely been hard-hitting crime dramas such as Port of Call and Papa. The Snowball on a Sunny Day (金多寶) is then a world away with its largely warmhearted story of an ordinary family pulled apart by the demands of modern living but brought back together through subterfuge when it becomes necessary to keep up the pretence that they’ve won the lottery.

As one of their neighbours says, every family needs its little white lies every now and then. Widowed grandmother Mui (Elaine Jin) has been playing the same lottery numbers for 30 years. Buying the ticket has become the responsibility of granddaughter Sunnie (Chung Suet Ying), but she is currently living a frantic life as a script supervisor/runner on film sets. Her plan to use her father’s Jockey Club account to buy one online is frustrated when he reveals he’s cancelled it after a run of bad luck at the tracks, meaning she’ll have to go to the shop in person. When she gets there, the security guard turns out to be someone she had an altercation with on a shoot, so they won’t let her in. A relative, Great Uncle Wah, says he’ll buy a ticket for her, but is escorted out by loan sharks before he can do so.

Inevitably, Mui’s numbers come up and Sunnie doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she never bought the ticket, so she embarks on an elaborate ruse to pretend they’re all millionaires by “borrowing” an expensive villa where her friend Jay (Edan Lui ) is currently “housesitting” for a film producer who’s apparently disappeared following rumours of some kind of financial impropriety. In some ways, Mui’s desire for a house where the whole family could live together is reflective of the current realities of the Hong Kong housing market. Even with a lottery win, the villa wouldn’t really be within their reach, which is why they have to make up excuses to convince her mother Charlotte (Harriet Yeung), an estate agent, that there are reasons it’s so “reasonably priced” that aren’t necessarily dealbreakers for the family such as being a stigmatised property where a violent death took place. 

Meanwhile, this tranquil, spacious environment and relief from financial pressures provide a place in which Sunnie’s parents, who are currently separated but keeping the breakdown of their marriage secret from Mui, a chance to work out their differences. Her father Ken (Jiro Lee) is a washed up former idol star who evidently didn’t make any financial plans for his or his family’s future and now makes a living as a taxi driver who refuses to move with the times by following GPS or working via apps. Sunnie, meanwhile, was sent to live with Mui so that her mother Charlotte could devote her attention to her younger brother Harry (Marek Li Hoi-Lam) who is neurodivergent and has health issues. 

While some tension exists between Mui, Sunnie, and Charlotte, Sunnie is reaching the age at which she begins to realise the sacrifices that were made on her behalf and is mindful of repaying them. Her career as a filmmaker is, however, off to a slow start with her life mostly spent at the beck and call of autocratic directors, managing extras and on occasion having to step in herself such as playing the part of a ghost when an actor doesn’t show up and wearing the costume that Mui has hand stitched for the production, presumably without any pay. There are various meta comments about the declining state of the Hong Kong film industry coupled with a sense of nostalgia for an earlier time when her grandfather hand painted posters and marquees for the latest releases after he and Mui migrated from Indonesia. 

Mui’s life on the public housing estate similarly evokes a sense of warmth in a community that’s otherwise disappearing. Aside from the jobsworth of an estate manager to goes around telling people off for drying their washing outside or breaking some sort of other rule, Mui is well liked by her neighbours and only wants to move to have more space so the family could all live together. Through all the zany, farcical action as they try to keep up the act for Mui, from whom you can’t can’t really hide anything, the family begins to repair itself in true New Year comedy style while apparently making friends with some of their other “enemies” such as an extra/ice cream van diver and a Liverpool fan with whom Manchester United devotee Ken has some kind of vendetta. Despite the silliness, the film has a degree of genuine poignancy in its closing moments as various truths are revealed and the family is forced to remember what it is that’s really most important. 

The Snowball on a Sunny Day screened as part of Hong Kong Film Fest UK

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

The Chatterboxes (みんな、おしゃべり！, Ken Kawai, 2025)

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Kazuhiko (Kazuyoshi Kezuka) has been running his electrical appliance shop successfully for many years, but finds his business frustrated by the local council’s attempts to rejuvenate the area and a subsequent feud born of a minor misunderstanding with the owner of the kebab shop that opens across the way. Ken Kawai’s down to earth comedy The Chatterboxes (みんな、おしゃべり！, Minna, Oshaberi!) examines the radiating effects of occasionally wilful miscommunication in an atmosphere that sometimes encourages fear and suspicion rather than acceptance or understanding. 

At least, there’s no real reason why Kazuhiko should immediately take against the Rifat (Murat Çiçek) and the Kurdish community who open a kebab shop nearby, but jumps to conclusions on noticing broken glass in his entranceway with Rifat standing over it. It was actually a little girl who broke a bulb on her way out and was too afraid to say anything, but Kazuhiko almost assumes Rifat has come in and broken something deliberately as an act of war. Kazuhiko’s reaction echoes that of the wider society which is not always accepting of difference, but is also ironic as Kazuhiko also feels himself to be an outsider not accepted by those around him because he is deaf. His shop has a sign saying that it caters to both hearing and non-hearing people, but it seems most don’t notice it and hearing people can sometimes behave insensitively at what they see as inconvenient service. One couple leave the store when Kazuhiko doesn’t respond to their question before he’s even had time to get out his sign out.

He has many things in common with the Kurdish community, but at the moment cannot see common ground only danger. The Kurds have moved into the community through a local government initiative run by the well-meaning Okita who seems like he’s trying to do a good thing, but going about it in the clumsiest way possible. He turns up unannounced to film a PR spot with Kazuhiko as the poster boy of his campaign, but badly botches the transmission by ignoring his wishes about how he wishes to be identified. Though Kazuhiko identifies himself as “deaf”, the subtitles have “hearing impaired”, which he finds offensive because he does consider himself to have an impairment. As his hearing daughter Natsumi (Itsuki Nagasawa) points out, there’s nothing difficult about communicating through sign language in their home because it’s simply their normal.

At a meditation meeting, the Kurdish community have a similar problem in that Okita repeatedly refers to them as “Turkish” and has only hired a Turkish to Japanese interpreter who cannot speak Kurdish. Rifat is particularly attached to the Kurdish language and for a number reasons prefers not to speak Turkish even if he can understand it, though other members of the community prefer to speak other languages such as Arabic. Part of the problem is caused by Okita’s assumptions, something which to his credit he does try to rectify by listening to the concerns of each community, but still to an extent looks down on them while his plan to use minorities to rejuvenate the town economically while making the council look compassionate is also a little exploitative if not patronising. Meanwhile, by having all the shops in this area run by minorities, he may be excluding rather than including them by effectively segregating them away from the more prosperous part of town.

Kazuhiko’s daughter Natsumi and Rifat’s son Hiwa (Yildirm Firat), who was born and raised in Japan, end up caught in the crossfire while quicker to realise that they have a lot more in common than might first be thought. They have each been forced into the role of interpreter for their parents who cannot communicate with the wider society due to a language barrier, but also have differing views on their role with Hiwa thinking he should translate his father’s Kurdish as accurately as possible even if it causes a problem, and Natsumi deliberately softening what her father signs to avoid creating additional conflict. They nevertheless became interested in learning each other’s languages and culture and grow closer through a process of cultural exchange. 

Something similar happens to her younger brother, Shun (Ohki Fukuda), who may also be neurodivergent as his teacher complains that he pays no attention in lessons, preferring to doodle instead, and makes no attempt to communicate with the other children at his deaf school. Fascinated by picking up a note in Arabic dropped by one of the Kurdish men, he begins to develop his own language which he then shares with the other children who begin to contribute to it too. The way the teacher reacts is emblematic of the fear associated with the inability to understand what another community is saying as she clearly views the children’s secret language as a challenge to her authority. Kazuhiko also jumps to the conclusion that the Kurds have been putting funny ideas in his son’s head, but equally he and some of the other parents don’t fully trust the teacher because she’s a hearing woman. They worry she’s forcing the values of the hearing society on their children rather than allowing them to embrace their deafness. Just as Rifat is fiercely protective of Kurdish, so Kazuhiko worries sign language may die out with all the new implants and apps that are being developed.

He also complains about the discrimination he’s faced and that hearing people often justify their decision to exclude him as “consideration” when it’s really just that they find communicating in a different way inconvenient so prefer not to bother. Of course, his late wife was a hearing woman and so is Natsumi so some of his comments are hurtful to her while reflecting an us and them mentality Natsumi would like to reject, especially considering her growing friendship with Hiwa. Nevertheless, words are often unnecessary for basic communication. You don’t need words to make someone understand you want them to come quickly because you need their help, and Kazuhiko is eventually able to make a sale just through gestures to an old man who is no longer able to speak and cannot write either. Kazuhiko only starts to rethink his views when Okita tells him he’s leaving the Kurds out of the project to avoid controversy, uncomfortably echoing the various ways in which he’s been excluded. 

Once misunderstandings have been cleared up, the communities find a source of friendship and solidarity embracing cultural exchange that leaves them feeling less afraid of each other and more welcoming towards others. Kawai deliberately leaves some of the Kurdish dialogue untranslated, simply transliterating it in the subtitles to make it clear that what is being said is not being understood outside of the community, leaving the audience in the same position as Kazuhiko and hearing monolingual Japanese people like Okita, but equally proving that not understanding fully isn’t really that much of problem, while being ignored and excluded is. Warm, funny, and venturing into absurdity in its final stretches, Kawai’s film is a much needed counter to the growing animosity of our recent times and a reminder of how much better life can be when you open yourself up to world beyond that you already know.

The Chatterboxes screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Trailer (English subtitles)