Hearing (Thính Giác, Lê Bảo, 2026)

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Unlike listening, hearing is a passive action. Though in some senses we can be selective about what we choose to hear, in a real sense we cannot. Silence can therefore be both liberating and oppressive. Ninh’s job involves installing decibel meters which cast an eerie purple light whenever the sound surpasses safe levels, as if he personally were involved in this act of regulating communication. But the irony is that the silence that surrounds him is more active and, in its own way, noisy with unspoken thoughts.

A direct contrast is drawn between the cacophony of the natural environment and the manmade sounds of the city, though even if this silence provides the opportunity to clear one’s head it can also be isolating. A rural worker laments that they have endured silence too long and it’s worn everyone out. They have nothing to say to each other when they return home and gradually their homes have become silent as the grave. Their petty resentments fill the air and block out the desire for communication.

Ninh’s own home is, in some ways, like this. Divorced, he lives with his mother whose marriage to his father has broken down to the point that his father lives elsewhere and refuses to see her. This is despite the fact that his father was abusive within the relationship. Ninh seems to bear some resentment towards him for this and the impact it’s had on his own life. Though he resented the way his father treated his mother, he found himself becoming violent towards his own wife which is why she eventually left him. He desperately misses his children and former family life, but is unable to heal this rift. The time for communication has passed. All there will ever be now is silence. His wife has married another man she says treats them better and also provides them with a greater level of material comfort. She asks him to stop going to his children’s school, as if reminding him of the new boundaries that exist within their relationships.

By similar token, his mother seems to see his father superimposed on him. She communicates more than it might be convenient for him to hear, abruptly revealing that she just remembered the first time that his father made love to her. Ninh’s attempt to pave their garden with cobble stones perhaps stands in either for the desire to build a path back towards healthier relationships, or a gradual filling of the space that leaves no room for communication. His mother remarks on the ways his rounded shoulders remind her of his father, though Ninh may not wish to be seen this way or be reminded of the paternal legacies he cannot escape.

In someways, the noisy bar in Saigon is a place where people can talk freely, if also perhaps inconsequentially. Their noisy conversation disrupts the world around them, disturbing the residents of a florist’s above, while another man is so driven to distraction that he throws a plant from the balcony which is later lovingly scooped up to be repotted in a new environment. A sheep stands incongruously outside a nightclub in which it is literally too noisy to hear oneself think as those inside either work out their frustrations physically or communicate in other ways. Or else, perhaps this noise has, in fact, driven them out of their minds, leaving them obsessively chasing sensory overload to escape the cacophony of their own unspoken thoughts.

Even the monkeys have withdrawn in fear, no longer swarming around the food that’s been left out for them while someone explains that there is ongoing conflict in the monkey world. There is a kind of stillness and serenity to be found in nature, Ninh’s mother caressing rain soaked rocks and then her own face, yet also a painfulness in the absence of human sound that has begun to turn itself inward and become destructive. A traditional opera troupe sings songs of longing that seem to echo a sense of lonely disconnection in Ninh and others who cannot seem to find the right frequency for human communication but remain trapped within their own soundscape amid the cacophony of emptiness.

Hearing screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Go for Broke 2 (重生2, Marc Ma, 2026)

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When her son is taken by child traffickers, a former assassin vows revenge in Marc Ma’s action drama, Go For Broke 2 (重生, chóngshēng 2). A thematic sequel to the earlier film, Go For Broke 2 once again deals with a delicate issue in a way that seems both ill-advised and at times unethical as it zooms in on a world of exploitation in which children are merely tools to broker influence between powerful men.

Or at least, as is made clear in its final sequence, the film draws influence from the Epstein scandal as the shady gangster Zuo Man (Sammo Hung Kam-bo) arranges parties on “Carnival Island” where important men can mix with small children. Xi La’s (Isabella Leong Lok-yau) son is abducted while on a school trip with other children from around the world and taken to a boat where he is physically and sexually abused. Xi La manages to track him down when he is the victim of a traffic accident, but is eventually unable to save him. After teaming up with the brother of a girl killed at the same time, Su Cheng (Wen Junhui), she vows revenge and to make everyone who harmed her son suffer.

Ironically, Xi La seems to have been an exploited child herself raised to become an assassin without knowing true family until making a life with Paka. Su Cheng is similarly an orphan who blames himself for his sister’s abduction. Zuo Man, by contrast, is running a family business with both his sons involved in trafficking children, one having begun abusing children himself despite Zuo Man’s disapproval. The action appears to take place in a fictionalised version of America, though aside from all the signs being in English with many of them referencing medical insurance, it doesn’t really look like it architecturally or environmentally.

Nevertheless, turning back to her old gang, Xi La is forced to step into a world of conspiracy as Zuo Man invites what seem to be various prominent American politicians and businessmen to the “island”. The children are dressed in Edwardian-style white outfits and distastefully asked to play in an all while room with clouds floating above that seems to be designed as some kind of heaven. Later, it turns out, that the children are also being experimented on and tortured to produce some kind of serum that can be used for its anti-ageing properties by a rich and powerful class obsessed with youth and immortally. It has to be said that the ethics of placing child actors into some of these scenes, such as one of a young boy undergoing some kind of electroshock treatment, may be ethically questionable, as is the film’s prominent use of AI.

While doing their best to save the other children, Xi La and Su Cheng discover that powerful people seem to be protecting Carnival Island and that alerting the authorities to its presence probably wouldn’t help. When confronted, Zuo Man crassly insists that all the kids were no hopers from the slums who would just have become “lowlifes” anyway, so all he’s doing is “recycling” them so they can be consumed to nourish the elite. As such, the film seems to be kicking back and the ingrained elitism of an apparently shadow world, but doesn’t do too much more with it than using it as evidence of the villains’ evilness while they would even sacrifice their own children to keep their business interests going.

Once again the film is really built around its action sequences but the use of CGI blood spatter again seems a little flippant given the seriousness of the child tracking issue. Similarly, Xi La’s quest to wipe out the gangsters seemingly borrows from exploitation cinema, but the film continues to take itself quite seriously rather than simply allowing Xi La to satisfy her desire to avenge Paka. Anchored by a powerful performance from Isabella Leong Lok-Sze which pretty much carries the film, it addresses themes such as motherhood and family along with the shadowy conspiracy which seems to hang over the “ordinary” world, but can never overcome a sense of tasteless and flippancy in the way that it approaches them, a sentiment borne out by the final AI generated sequence linking the action with real-world events.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Go For Broke (重生, Marc Ma, 2024)

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Once again set in a fictional South East Asian nation, Marc Ma’s action drama Go For Broke (重生, chóngshēng) is a rather unsubtle entry into the anti-drugs propaganda genre in which a former soldier goes undercover to undermine a drug lord’s empire after his family is destroyed by gangsters and narcotics. As such, it may appear insensitive in including such lines as “once addicted you can never quit,” and “addicts not only harm themselves but drag their families into hell,” which the demonise the user even if it makes clear that “drug cartels will stop at nothing to lure people into addiction for profit”.

A case in point, Zhang Yao’s (Nick Cheung Ka-Fai) wife is tricked into consuming illegal drugs by Thai-speaking gangsters without her knowledge or consent, though their end goal seems only to be getting her addicted rather than pressing her into other forms of exploitation to make money for them in return for the drugs. In any case, once she starts using drugs, Zhang Yao’s wife becomes incapable of caring for their daughter who wanders off and is hit by a car. Zhang Yao perhaps feels some responsibility for this as, after retiring from the army, he took a job on a boat to earn money that was supposed to fund their future, leaving his family undefended. Though he forgives his wife, she cannot forgive herself and sees no way out of her addiction so takes her own life.

Two years later, Zhang Yao is working with a police officer, An Du (Ethan Juan), who claims to oppose the rampant police corruption fostered by the police chief, his uncle An Pei (Jack Kao). After killing off the real one in prison, Zhang Yao goes undercover as the long-lost son of a local businessman/drug lord Mu Kun (Vithaya Pansringarm) who is suffering from an illness sparking a succession crisis within the gang as right-hand man Herta clearly expected he’d become the new boss on Kun’s death. After joining the gang, Zhang Yao sets about disrupting the relationship between Kun and police chief Pei, a drug user himself, which underpins the local drugs trade.

The “fictional South East Asian nation” setting allows the film to explore themes of police corruption which wouldn’t pass censorship if it were set on the Mainland, but corruption does seems to be otherwise endemic with Pei claiming that men are not good or bad but strong or weak. As long as you’re strong enough, you can oppress those below you, he tells Du before telling him to call his mistress so that he can enjoy oppressing her. Du appears to have feelings for Nanqian (Sandrine Pinna) who is trapped in her relationship with Pei because her policeman father’s life was also ruined by drugs. Like Zhang Yao’s wife she sees no way out of her situation while Pei physically and mentally abuses her.

It becomes clear that each of these people’s lives have been negatively affected by a family member’s drug use for which they want revenge against the dealers. In the absence of justice, they’ve had to take things into their own hands. As twist piles on twist, Ma implies that that a vast network is working in the shadows to oppose the drugs trade and the inherent corruption in their society. Though the society itself is rotten to its core, there is a purification that seems to take place as the vigilantes bring light back to otherwise dark place, but at the same time, all the blame for the rise in drug use is placed on dealers forcibly addicting people while ignoring the underlying social circumstances which may have led people in despair to turn to drugs and at the same time demonising those who take them for having dragged everyone else into their “hell”. The use of blood splatter also lends a degree of cartoonishness to the action sequences as Ma seems to draw from exploitation cinema in the film’s general outlandishness while otherwise slightly at odds with the persistent grimness of the drug-ridden society. It does, however, have a degree of poignancy in its melancholy conclusion that seems to imply that salvation may be possible after all.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub (타짜: 벨제붑의 노래, Choi Kook-hee, 2026)

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“Luck” is a funny thing. You might think you’ve come out on top, only to realise that perhaps you haven’t been quite so lucky after all. Choi Kook-hee’s Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub (타짜: 벨제붑의 노래, Tazza: Beelzebubui Norae) is the latest instalment in the thematic series that began with 2006 manwha adaptation Tazza: The High Rollers, though otherwise a stand-alone tale. This time around, gambling is more a means of revenge as two men, who are in effect two sides of the same coin, find their roles constantly reversed.

Indeed ParkTae (Roh Jae-Won) characterises them as Beelzebub and Lucifer vying for control with Beelzebub the apparent loser. He and JangTae (Byun Yo-Han), who each share the name Taeyoung, met in high school and became friends, though ParkTae came to resent JangTae for apparently having charmed luck in which everything seemed to go his way and he always came out on top. The boys develop a shared love of gambling, but ParkTae is experiencing a difficult home life in which his mother is a religious fanatic who seems to have an alcohol problem. She regularly beats him with a crucifix and refers to him as the antichrist, which perhaps fuels his characterisation of himself as Lucifer. JangTae, meanwhile, has lost both his parents but shares a warm familial environment with his older sister Tae-hee (Lim Se-Mi). They later take in ParkTae too, but he soon develops unreturned feelings for Tae-hee that see him almost long to push JangTae out of the next.

Filled with self-loathing, ParkTae sees himself as unlucky and feels hard done by, resentful of the ease with which JangTae seems to live his life and what he sees as the way JangTae’s “luck” often ends up making him look foolish. ParkTae seems to be the more the rational side of the crypto casino business the guys start together while JangTae is readier to make decisions on gut instinct. JangTae later asks him if it wasn’t ParkTae who was the lucky one all along. He was smart, talented, and had people who loved him, though he was too consumed with resentment  to notice. While the guileless JangTae only offered him support and friendship, ParkTae dreamed of ruling alone and taking the entire prize for himself. 

That might be why he sets up a honeytrap with the help of Korean American lobbyist Linda Park (Stephanie Lee) who’s supposedly agreed to give them the lowdown on how to clear the way for a physical casino in Vietnam. JangTae has to bet his life on the toss of coin where both sides spell death only to find himself lucky once again when it somehow ends up standing on edge. Taken in by a former card sharp hiding out in Vietnam (Jo Woo-Jin), JangTae is co-opted into another battle for revenge in which a young woman (Ayaka Miyoshi) plots against the man who shot her father (Tsuyoshi Ihara) who foolishly bet his life after getting too into a poker game. The lure of odds seems to drive men mad with each begging for just one more game to turn it all around. It is, however, a battle of wits as much as anything else in which the pair engage in a kind of psychological warfare over the gaming table.

As JangTae says, maybe ParkTae was always luckier than he was. He just isn’t able to see why a particular outcome benefits him while fixating on winning or being a conventional success. ParkTae wants to knock JangTae off his perch to satisfy his ego, but cannot shake his inferiority complex and attributes all his shortcomings to his unluckiness rather than accept the consequences of his own actions. As JangTae’s mentor taught him, the luckiest man at the table is the one who knows when to walk away. That’s something that seems to have eluded ParkTae who doesn’t know when to quit when he’s ahead. Rather, he fixates on his chosen income unable to see clear where real “luck” lies. In any case, the dynamics between the two men are continually in shift as they find themselves quite literally staking their lives on the cards while wondering whether either of them has the courage to see things through. In the end, the real winner maybe the one who knows when it’s time to call it quits, rather than allow themselves to be manipulated by the constant allure of the odds.

Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub opens in US cinemas October 16 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

It’s My Time (魔方小姐, Bai Xue, 2026)

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A no-nonsense grandma gets a new lease on life after discovering the joys of cubing in Bai Xue’s warmhearted dramedy, It’s My Time (魔方小姐, mófāng xiǎojie). Inspired by a true story and much less gritty than Bai’s debut The Crossing, the film is partly a rebuke against those who try to write off the older generation and a reminder that it’s never too late to try new things or make a change in your life.

For Yanzhong (Michelle Yeoh), however, cubing is also a kind of grudge match in which she tries to overcome her sense of humiliation in having become the victim of a scam which cost her her home. The stress caused her to have a stroke, so she’s currently living in a nursing home with her childhood best friend Shuzhen (Sa Rina). She does not, however, take very well to the kind of infantilisation that the well-meaning staff subject her to. Ironically, the roles have been reversed and every time she causes trouble, the manager calls her mild-mannered son, Dawei (Bai Ke). For unexplained reasons, Yanzhong seems to speak Cantonese with her son when they’re alone while they speak Mandarin with everyone else, perhaps bearing out their close bond and Yanzhong’s isolation from most of the residents who disapprove of her rabble-rousing antics, encouraging her to remember her age and suggesting that she’s just making things hard for her son whose boss is forever yelling at him on the phone. 

When down on his luck former “magic cube” champion Youwei (Liu Haoran) arrives to teach a class on “cubing” which he claims helps prevent dementia, Yanzhong discovers a hidden talent that gives her something new to live for. For Youwei, meanwhile, it seems as if his reduced circumstances are partly down to the death of his mother for which he blames himself. His father had a gambling problem and then abandoned the family, leaving Youwei to pay off all his debts which is one reason why he’s constantly hassled by a loan shark who seems to consider himself family. All of which perhaps leads him to look to Yanzhong as a kind of mother figure, especially as she tries to take care of him by getting him a place to stay at the nursing home after noticing that he’s technically homeless while promising to pay off the money he owes and buy him a house if they succeed in becoming cubing superstars. 

Even so, Youwei is the teacher here if one trying to convince her that slow and steady wins the race while others such an unscrupulous media boss push her to make the most of her viral success as the cubing grandma by aiming too high too fast. He writes off people like her as members of the “slowest and most useless group”, while Yanzhong is constantly trying to be seen as a human being who still has a life to live rather than just waiting around to die. She does, however, have a sharp tongue which as her friend points out hurts herself as well as others as she often lashes out defensively and ends up pushing people away. After achieving cubing stardom, she starts trying to “help out” her son’s family by telling him to quit his job and work at the cube factory, while his wife should close her nail salon and open a magic cube training school, and she’ll send her granddaughter to a private school. Of course, they’re pretty happy with the life they have and irritated by Yanzhong’s attempts to railroad them into her vision of familial bliss. They support her cubing career, but only because they want her to be healthy and happy.

The irony being that Yanzhong stuck it out at the home because she thought she’d be a burden to her son and his family if she went to live with them, just as her best friend Shuzhen really wants to live with her daughter in the US but is too afraid to ask her. The film’s English-language title is then a reference to Yanzhong rediscovering that it’s her time to shine, and also the hyper focus that cubing requires that presents Yanzhong with a stream of images from her past all of which remind her what’s really important in life. Even when facing setbacks and hardships, she never gives up, and her friends and family never give up on her despite the odd harsh word or misunderstanding. A gentle tale of intergenerational friendship and the energising power of sports, Bai’s warmhearted comedy insists that it’s never too late start something new and just like a magic cube, there are infinite possibilities in life’s twists and turns.

It’s My Time is in UK cinemas from 16th October courtesy of Central City Media.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Atlantic Rhapsody (大西洋, Zhong Kaifeng, 2026)

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After accidentally boiling a shark alive at the supermarket where he works, a young man embarks on an epic quest to find the estranged father he hasn’t seen since he was a child in Zhong Kaifeng’s surreal treatise on sound and memory, Atlantic Rhapsody (大西洋, Dàxīyáng). Set between the early ’80s and the present day, the film charts the fates of those who have been displaced by the economic reforms of the ’90s and the increasingly consumerist society of today.

There is something rather absurd about the idea of keeping a mini shark in a supermarket just for decoration. This fearsome marine predator has been placed in a box and constrained, a lonely figure who exists only to be looked at with a pane of glass continually between it and the rest of the world. In some ways, Ding Mao (Roy Wang) will come to feel this way about his father who has become inaccessible to him except through the memories he is able to conjure up after heading north to his hometown.

Ding Jianguo (Yin Fang) was a fan of The Man From Atlantis which they all watched dubbed into Mandarin in the town square. He hears a strange tale from a mysterious blind fortune teller but can only remember that it was about a man who came out of the sea and then returned there, as he perhaps will do. Meanwhile, his tooth seems to regrow after it gets knocked out by an angry local on their arrival at the hotel where his crew have been sent for a free trip in lieu of severance when the factory they worked at is closed down. Ding Jianguo is one of a host of men cast adrift in the increasingly capitalist post-economic reform society and himself dreams of opening business.

Zhong films these sequences in a heavy grain that echoes 16mm and in a style that recalls that of the Sixth Generation. Its realism stands in stark contrast to the surreal composition and bold aesthetics of the modern day setting in which pretty everyone ends up wearing some variety of woolly hat in the shape of a marine creature. Yet the picture we see of North Eastern China is that of post-industrial decline. Ding had another reason to go to Shenyang in that someone had seen one of his videos in which he found an iron nail in a bit of discount sausage, spitting it out much like Ding Jianguo did his tooth, and claimed it belonged to their pet who had a knee operation shortly before going missing. Li Xin (Li Xueqin) thinks he’s her long lost classmate, and Ding Mao can’t actually remember if he is or not, but in any case she takes him to the site of a disused theme park. This place used to be thriving and prosperous, she says, but now it’s just overgrown ruins. She’s been trying to recreate a rollercoaster in sound with the help of some local children.

Ding Mao has also been hearing strange noises he’d like to get tot the bottom of. They sound sort of metallic with a bell at the end, a little like some kind of sea creature. He also comes across the mysterious fortune teller who gives him a special free gift and also tells him to find his father. While he has encounters with several other eccentric people including a Japanese picture book writer who has memories of being a tiger hunted by Japanese soldiers in a past life, but struggles to find a place for himself while trying to figure out what exactly happened to his father. Li Xin tells him of another shared memory, the time a shark was killed and there was a local furore about the rare chance to eat shark meat. All of these stories and memories eventually coalesce around Ding Mao as a kind of raucous rhapsody of China’s recent history. In a strange way, he is able to transcend this world and enter that of his father, though only as an observer. They remain on opposite sides of the glass unreachable to each other. Like the man in the story, Ding Mao has regained his memories, or perhaps come up with new ones, but can never be reborn into that world. A surreal odyssey through an oddly ethereal vision of deindustrialised China, there is a kind of poignancy in Ding Mao’s quest and search for meaning but also serenity as each of its disparate plot threads slowly coalesces into one.

Atlantic Rhapsody screens 16th/17th October as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

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)