Category: Festivals

Fragment (파편, Kim Sung-yoon, 2024) [Fantasia 2025]

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People often think of crime as something linear that ties together villain and victim but is otherwise an isolated event. The truth is that crime reverberates through the world around it, shattering the lives of others in the backdraught of its irrational violence. Son of the murdered couple, Gi-su is fond of saying that he’s the victim as if trying to reclaim this role and make it his identity while it remains to that Jun-gang and his sister Jun-hui are victims too for they have also lost their father who is now in prison.

Indeed, while Gi-su may face overbearing care from his well-meaning relatives, Jun-gang is burdened with the stigma of being a murderer’s son while trying to protect his sister from the fallout of this awful situation. His most pressing problem is that they don’t have any money. His father did not appear to have any before either, but now their utilities are about to be cut off and their landlady’s sick of being strung along. Yet these aren’t problems a 15-year-old boy can fix on his own. He tries to get a job in a local convenience store but is first turned away because boys his age should be in school, and then offered a job but only on parental consent which he can’t get for obvious reasons. His teacher, Mr Park, is one of the few people to know the truth and keen to help him but has few real ways of doing so. As the son of the murderer, most are content to leave him to his fate and believe that he simply doesn’t deserve support because of what his father has done.

Jun-gang too feels guilty, though none of this is his fault. He knew what kind of man his father was and is always eager to prove that he is different. But the fact that he seems nice, honest, and polite doesn’t really matter. He’s still chased and bullied with kids at school going on about killer genes and actively singling him out for a beating. Jun-hui too is ostracised by her friends who’ve been told not to play with her because of what her father did. Gi-su tries to ease his frustration on him, breaking into their apartment and smashing the place up after coming to school to find him. As much as Gi-su tries to insist that he’s the victim, Jun-gang is a victim too and unlike Gi-su has no further family to support him and no one else to turn to for help. He fights back with decency, but largely finds it thrown in his fate.

Gi-su, meanwhile, is broken by his trauma and in the midst of a nervous breakdown exacerbated by exam stress. Like Jun-gang he blames himself as a means of asserting control over the situation and struggles to accept the new world he now inhabits following his parents’ deaths. His sympathetic aunt tries her best to get through to him, but his well-meaning uncle is a font of toxic masculinity screaming at him that he’s wallowed in his grief long enough and needs to man up and get over it. Though they’re cast in the roles of killer and victim, the boys are really much the same, each having lost their homes and families and now being essentially displaced from within their new lives.

The battle is really whether they can hang in there long enough to begin to see the other side and that there are still possibilities in their lives. The reason for the killing is never revealed, nor is it particularly important, if hinting at the constant pressures of the outward society. Jun-gang’s father’s behaviour implies long years of paternal failure, domination, and abuse from which Jun-gang is trying to emerge unscathed while Gi-su must on the other hand come to terms with the implosion of a seemingly perfect family life. That they each come to recognise that none of this is their fault and they’re really just the same is testament the boys’ innate goodness and growing sense of solidarity in the midst of so much acrimony. Hard-hitting though it may be in its exploration of how societal prejudice can allow people to slip through the cracks, Kim Sung-yoon’s film is also in its way uplifting in the presence of those are willing to help and Jun-gang’s refusal to give in to what the world tells him he should be,

Fragment screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Smashing Frank (搗破法蘭克, Trevor Choi, 2025)

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Youth’s attempt to televise its revolution results in unforeseen consequences in Trevor Choi’s crime thriller Smashing Frank (搗破法蘭克). Giving Hong Kong a kind of comic book gloss, Choi locates the source of corruption in a thuggish gangster posing as a businessman and laundering his ill-gotten gains through a fake church all while claiming to be working for the prosperity of the city. Fed up with a world so obviously corrupt, Ayla (Hedwig Tam) and her friends attempt to fight back through theft and their mission of becoming robbery influencers in social media. 

It later becomes apparent that Ayla is doing most of this as a kind of revenge. Her sister took her own life after being sexually assaulted and becoming pregnant, while Ayla sacrificed her own bright future by assaulting a “rich pervert”. Despite having gained a first-class degree and being on track for a job as a hotel manager, Ayla now appears to have gone rogue and has lost faith in mainstream society and law enforcement which turns a blind eye to certain crimes to keep the peace. After being sentenced to community service, she teams up with childhood friend Hugo (Locker Lam) and Tao Chun (Kaki Sham), a man convicted of voyeurism who becomes their getaway driver, to do crime she describes as a kind of performance art.

Yet Ayla claims she’s no kind of Robin Hood and mainly in this for herself and the glory, explaining that she uploads the videos for “fun”. Nevertheless, she eventually realises that everything links back to the Unity Haven Church and its shady CEO, Ho (Ben Yuen). Ho has already been featured in the news having been accused of misusing church funds and as the gang discover may have links to human trafficking and child exploitation. But he’s also pretty well entrenched within the infrastructure of the city and otherwise untouchable. As such, he comes to represent the corrupt authoritarianism of the contemporary society while Ayla and Frank echo the protestors of recent years. Given the opportunity for a giant payout, Ayla tells Ho where to go and explains that her generation never got to have nice things, so the reason she robbed his jewellery shop was to show them that luxurious mansions were being built in the slums. 

He may be one of the old men that’s ruining the world, but despite herself, Ayla seems to be consumed with a sense of injustice that the rich get away with their crimes while people like her sister and grandmother are left to suffer. Through her influencer revolution, she intends Frank to become a kind of militia resisting the hyper capitalistic society on behalf of the youth it has betrayed. As Hugo says, if he had a regular job he’d never be able to buy a house anyway while others seem equally fed up with disappointing corporate existences that no longer provide a decent quality of life. Ho may be all about making the city prosper, but it’s mostly for himself and his friends rather than the wider society. 

Chelsea (Renci Yeung), Chun’s former associate running badger games, even says that they didn’t really care that she blackmailed them because they had bigger things to worry about. There is then a kind of solidarity that exists between the team in their shared victimisation under men like Ho and desire for the liberation of those like them that gives their mission a weight beyond simple rebellion, even if the constant flirtation between Chelsea and Ayla dangles like an unresolved plot thread. Even so, Ayla’s recklessness reeks of desperation as Hugo points out they may all die the following day but perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad as continuing to live like this. The nihilism that colours their lives is all pervasive, and perhaps a reaction to the imposition of authoritarianism and failure of the protest movement that causes Ayla to launch her revolution in the distinctly youthful space of the internet and spread the word through social media which those like Ho cannot fully control. Hong Kong media does not, she claims, report on certain crimes in the interests of making the city feel safe and stable for men like Ho which is why she had to televise her revolution herself. It may be a forlorn hope, but it’s all she appears to have while otherwise trapped in a world of constant corruption.

Smashing Frank screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards (赤羽骨子のボディガード, Junichi Ishikawa, 2024) [Fantasia 2025]

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Unbeknownst to her, a high school girl’s entire class is actually made up of bodyguards hired by her distant father, whom she doesn’t know either, to keep her safe because his work makes her an easy target for international criminals. Adapted from the manga by Masamitsu Nigatsu, Junichi Ishikawa’s Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards (赤羽骨子のボディガード, Akabane Honeko no Bodyguard) is in some ways fairly typical of the genre in its parade of unrealistic hairstyles and over-the-top humour, but also anchors itself in a genuine sense of friendship and youth solidarity as the class come together under a charismatic leader not only to protect Akabane but each other too.

That charismatic leader would be Ibuki, a cocksure delinquent and childhood friend of Akabane’s who’s also been carrying a torch for her all these years. Nevertheless, it comes as quite a surprise when he’s officially hired by Jingu (Kenichi Endo), a man who claims to be the head of Japan’s Security Services. After his wife died, he decided to place Akabane for adoption to keep her safe from the duplicitous world in which he lived. But now there’s a 10 million yen bounty on her head and every criminal enterprise he’s ever been after is desperate to get their hands on her. What Ibuki doesn’t know is that he’s hired the rest of the class too who all have various skills from rhythmic gymnastics to torture. It’s imperative that Akabane never find out that she’s a target, nor that Jingu is her biological father, and continues to live a “normal” carefree life.

She certainly appears to have no skills of her own other than her ability to quote legal infractions in her desire to become a lawyer like her adopted parents. While this may on some level remove her agency in making her dependent on her classmates for protection, it’s also Akabane that takes the initiative in romance by making overtures to the otherwise diffident Ibuki. Other the other hand, she’s painted as the mirror image of her sister, Masachika (Tao Tsuchiya), who has been raised as a boy and taught to be an assassin but craves the kind of love and affection Jingu pours on Akabane. 

This is one reason that she is eventually able to find unexpected common ground as she and Akabane are obviously both firmly on team Ibuki with Akabane thankful that someone else can see Ibuki’s good side even if most people mistake him for being a scary and dangerous person. Like his father, the late policeman, he believes that to protect someone you must protect everything they love which is why he’s desperate to protect the whole of the class too so that Akabane’s world remains consistent. Most of the other students aren’t too invested in their jobs and are only doing this for the paycheque, but eventually end up coming together thanks to Ibuki’s insistence that he won’t leave them behind. Not only does he need their help to protect Akabane, but genuinely respects their friendship and wants to save them too.

Then again, we’re presented with a series of images of paternal and hierarchal failure. Ibuki’s own father was killed in the line of duty and while alive had little time for his son, if like Jingu trying to keep his child out of the dangerous world in which he lives. Jingu gave up one daughter to keep her safe, but has a strained relationship with the second who feels like a failure and is desperate for a chance. Even the head of the class is compromised as he first proves himself willing to sacrifice the lives of his men in achieving their goal of protecting Akabane and then seems to commit several blunders including being unable to unmask a mole. Ibuki becomes a de facto leader, but at the same time what emerges under him is a relationship of equals and solidarity between those in a similar situation. They are no longer working for Jingu or following their leader’s orders but thinking for themselves and actively protecting each other. 

Ishikawa puts together some excellent action sequences that demonstrate what a well-oiled machine the students can be in standing up against criminality while maintaining the zany humour and making Ibuki an oddly pure figure of warmth and integrity as he resolves to protect all of those around him if most especially Akabane to whom he is unable to voice his real feelings. She meanwhile, admittedly a damsel in distress, is at least taking the lead when it comes to their romance even if she continues to needle him about his rough and uncouth behaviour. Honeko Akabane is it seems very well protected from any threats that come her way save perhaps that of her hidden past.                                                                                                                                    

Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Babanbabanban Vampire (ババンババンバンバンパイア, Shinji Hamasaki, 2025)

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It turns out immortality’s not all it’s cracked up to be in Shinji Hamasaki’s adaptation of the manga by Hiromasa Okujima, Baban Baban Ban Vampire (ババンババンバンバンパイア). At 450 years old, Mori Ranmaru (Ryo Yoshizawa), one-time lover of Oda Nobunaga (Shinichi Tsutsumi), is working as an attendant in a bathhouse in an attempt to, as he says, “live an ordinary life earnestly,” while staving off the darkness of an existence free of the spectre of death. 

Yet, there is an uncomfortable darkness at the centre of this otherwise humorous and ironic tale in that what Mori Ran is actually doing is grooming a child so that he can enjoy him when he judges that he is “ready.” There’s an obviously unpalatable reading of the film that renders it as an allegory for paedophilia, while there’s also an undeniable poignancy in likening the figure of the vampire of that of a gay man in an oppressive society. Mori Ran accosts his victims in dark alleyways and his assignations with other men are necessarily short and secretive. They also result in death, while Mori Ran describes most of his victims as tainted and disgusting as if echoing an internalised sense of self-loathing. He continues to hold up Rihito (Rihito Itagaki) as a figure of innocence and purity because he once saved his life when he was baking in the heat of an usually hot spring when the boy was only five years old. 

Mori Ran’s internalised homophobia is somewhat mirrored in that of the teacher Sakamoto (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) who is also a vampire hunter but bewitched by Mori Ran and longing to be initiated by him, though Mori Ran declines to give him what he sees as a curse. Imbued with a gothic sensibility, Mori Ran believes that humans are beautiful because they die, while vampirism is debased and ugly. He refuses to condemn someone he admires to his own fate which he describes as a kind of inescapable hell in which he is unable to die. He no longer believes in love, though is haunted by his loss of Nobunaga, and sees humans merely as food. 

Nevertheless, it seems he has found purpose in his present life of living with Rihito’s family and working in their bathhouse despite convincing himself that he’s only biding his time until Rihito is ripe for the picking. According to Mori Ran, the sweetest blood belongs to that of 18-year-old male virgins which is why his goal of ensuring that Rihito remains virginal and pure is becoming more difficult now that he has entered adolescence. Much of the comedy derives from Mori Ran’s emotional cluelessness and paranoia on discovering that Rihito has fallen for a girl, Aoi (Nanoka Hara), with whom he had a stereotypical meet cute on his way to his high school entrance ceremony. Knowing that he has to nip this in the bud as soon as possible, he pays a visit to Aoi to warn her off but fails to realise that not only did she barely notice Rihito let alone fall in love with him, but that she is actually obsessed with vampires and is keener on him. 

But then again, there’s something additionally troubling about Rihito’s immediate classification of Mori Ran as a “love rival” in the mistaken belief he’s after Aoi too rather than as someone who should probably be reported to some kind of authority. After all, even if he were not 450 years old but the 25 he claims to be, hanging around exclusively with high schoolers is odd and bordering on inappropriate in itself. Having misunderstood his intentions, Aoi also believes that Mori Ran is waiting for her to be “ready,” in a partial recognition that this is wrong because she’s a child but also prepared to wait for the mysterious vampire without considering the implications of his being interested in a 15-year-old girl if that actually were the case. 

Nevertheless, what Mori Ran discovers is really a different kind of love in his gradual integration into the human world and the the friendships he forms not only with Rihito, but Aoi, her muscular brother Franken (Mandy Sekiguchi) who also has a crush on Mori Ran, and the lovelorn teacher Sakamoto, even if he’s still focused on his mission of keeping Rihito pure so he can drink his blood on his 18th birthday. His attempts to prevent a relationship forming between Rihito and Aoi are all countrerprodcuteive and would like end up bringing them together if it were not for the fact of Aoi’s crush on him of which he remains oblivious. The inherently zany humour of the situation with its series of concentric love triangles along with the warmheartedness of Rihito’s homelife when contrasted with the “mysterious” serial killings on the news cannot completely overcome the unpalatable undercurrent of Mori Ran’s pederastic quest, if glossing over it with admittedly delicious irony and absurdism.

Babanbabanban Vampire screens 27th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Noise (노이즈, Kim Soo-jin, 2024) [Fantasia 2025]

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There are things you have to put up with if you live in an apartment block, and if you live in a city an apartment is often your only option. The question is, how much is it reasonable to expect someone to accept and what are the limits that can reasonably be placed on your own behaviour. What does it really mean to be a “good neighbour”? It’s clear the “noise” at the centre of Kim Soo-jin’s apartment block horror is not simply the sound of other people living, but a swarming cacophony of societal anxiety and persistent judgement.

There’s a large banner hanging off the side of this particular building that says residents don’t want to die inside their collapsing apartment block. Their fear hints the indifference of a society driven by capitalistic desires in which things like building regulations that ensure people’s safety and quality of life have become a thing of the past. The chairwoman of the residents’ association (Baek Joo-hee) is fiercely petitioning for the block to be knocked down and rebuilt properly, but that won’t happen if they don’t think they’ll be able to sell units in the new build because of untoward rumours about the old one. For those reasons, she doesn’t want people causing trouble or dragging up unpleasantness, which is why she’s not minded to help when Ju-young’s (Lee Sun-bin) sister Ju-hee (Han Su-a) goes missing after declaring that she was going to find the source of the “noise” within the apartment block that’s driving her and others out of their minds.

The interesting thing is that Ju-young is originally not particularly bothered by noise as she has a hearing impairment from a childhood accident and can simply remove her hearing aid to avoid it. Ju-hee asks her if she really can’t hear anything, or if it’s more like she chooses not to hear and goes about her life deliberately avoiding the “noise” of the contemporary society. There may be something in her criticism in that Ju-young, who works in a noisy factory, eventually moves out into the workers’ dorms to escape her sister’s increasingly erratic behaviour rather than stay to help her through her anxiety or actively look for somewhere less “noisy” they could live together in peace.

Hearing noise from above, Ju-hee bangs on the ceiling but inadvertently spreads the noise below as if a great flow of frustration and resentment were trickling down from top to bottom so that those nearest to the ground can barely hear themselves think. But there’s also a great stink rising from below given that the basement is home to a decade’s worth of illegally dumped rubbish. Rather than dispose of it, the security guard has simply chained up the doors but complains that for unclear reasons people are still dumping things through the broken window at the back, which no one is making an effort to fix. There’s so much “noise” that no one is really paying attention to the bigger things like missing women and fugitive killers, in part because they’re inconveniences that would prevent them upgrading their block or being able to sell up and move on. Yet paradoxically, the owner-residents blame everything of the renters insisting that they are inconsiderate because they don’t have a stake in the building’s future. 

The block itself becomes a kind of metaphor for a lingering authoritarianism with constant reminders that everyone can hear what everyone else is saying and is making less than silent judgements about the way their fellow residents live their lives. A woman drives herself crazy believing that she’s being a good neighbour by letting her child play outside so the noise won’t disturb anyone, only for them to be hit by a car and killed. The building has a haunted quality, as if everyone here were already dead and living in a kind of limbo. They complain about the noise, but ignore it when their neighbours are desperately asking for help. As Ju-young later advises, the way to continue living is not to listen and live your own life in your own way rather than give in to the petty demands of those around you who try to control your life because they know they can’t control their own. Driven out of their minds by the constant thrumming of social pressure, acts of violence are inevitable but as Ju-young traverses the dingy corridors and ill-lit stairways in search of her missing sister all while venturing deeper inside her own buried trauma, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where exactly the threat may lie.

Noise screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Rewrite (リライト, Daigo Matsui, 2025) [Fantasia 2025]

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A mysterious transfer student arrives from the future. You have 20 wonderful days with him, but then he must return to his own time. He tells you that he came back to meet you and experience your time because of a book you will write, and your future self also shows you the book, tells you you did indeed write it, and that everything’s going to be okay. But in 10 years’ time, when you’re your “future self”, you from the past does not show up to get any of this information. Did something go wrong? Is the timeline crumbling? Or did you just imagine all this as a manifestation of “youth”?

When this happened to her, Miyuki (Elaiza Ikeda) believed that she was “the heroine of that summer,” but the truth is of course that she was always the heroine of her own life and had the right and power to make her own choices. Adapted from the novel by Haruka Honjo, Daigo Matsui’s Rewrite (リライト) is, like Obayashi’s The Little Girl Who Conquered Time, about the dangers of nostalgia and the over romanticisation of youth. What Miyuki gradually comes to realise is that one of the formative experiences of her teenage years may not have been unique or special but happened to literally everyone and changed them too in ways that were not always good. Because she met Yasuhiko (Kei Adachi) from 300 years in the future, she became a writer. But it remains true that her first few books weren’t about him at all. She always had the talent and the inclination. The impetus of destiny was only what gave her the confidence to pursue it. She knew she could, because she already had.

Yet, she’s in her hometown to close a loop on this unresolved romance of her youth despite having built a good life for herself as a successful author with a nice husband she met during the course of her work who is caring and supportive of her career. At the high school reunion she’s cajoled into going to, her former classmates sing the song they were practising for choir, “Cherry” by Spitz, which is also about “rediscovering each other, some day, same place,” echoing Yasuhiko’s cryptic claim that they’d meet again “in the future” (whose he doesn’t say) hinting at the way these feelings have been left hanging with only a yearning for the past and a painful nostalgia in their place. What Miyuki really has to ask herself is if she’s the person she wants to be in the present and is who she is because of the choices she made independently rather than solely because she was trying to fulfil the destiny given to her Yasuhiko.

To do so, she must face the fallacy of the “chosen one” mentality. The film rams this home in the parallel story of one of Miyuki’s classmates who tells her that she wasn’t chosen but actively chose to accept a kind of destiny rather than simply going along with it and that Miyuki too could “rewrite” the past if she wanted. In effect, this is what she’s already done as her husband implies when he repeatedly asks her if the book is “fiction”. Of course, it is, though she believed it not to be because it’s rooted in nostalgia and the personal myth making of the idealised romance of her youth. Matsui too plays with this sense of nostalgia in moving the setting of the story to Onomichi to mimic that of Obayashi’s The Little Girl Who Conquered Time and making frequent visual references to the 1983 film along with casting Toshinori Omi, the original boy who leapt through time, as the class teacher at the 10 years later reunion.

But the truth remains that Miyuki must learn to let go of the past, or else take mastery over it by rewriting her own story to accept that, as her husband says, the past and present are all hers. She can write anything and can finally leave her own time loop by writing her way out of youthful nostalgia and accepting something more like an objective reality along with the life she has now which appears to be happy and successful. Scripted by Makoto Ueda who has a long history of time-travel themed movies from Summer Time Machine Blues to River, Matsui’s poignant drama is shot through with irony and in constant dialogue with pop culture touchstones from the Obayashi film to Shunji Iwai’s Love Letter, while at the same time insisting that while you are the main character in your own life, you’re not the only one and a hundred stories are going on at the same time as yours. What really matters is not hanging on to the memories of an idealised past, but to live the life you want in the present for as long as this particular loop lasts.

Rewrite screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Organ Child (器子, Chieh Shueh Bin, 2024)

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How far would a father go for his daughter? There’s an ironic duality at the centre of Organ Child (器子, qìzǐ) in that the vengeful man at its centre and the man he is chasing are basically the same and may have made the same choices were the situation reversed. Nevertheless, a terrible and morally indefensible crime has taken place which will lead to many more of the same as bereaved father Qi-mao (Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan) stealthily tracks down all those who stole his newborn daughter and sold her to an organ trafficking ring. 

The film is keen to paint Qi-mao as a figure of uncompromised fatherhood through his association with a group of orphaned boys. Working as a baseball coach at the orphanage, he becomes a surrogate father to them and provides a familial environment as he and his wife frequently invite the boys for dinner. When his daughter is born, she automatically gets a whole baseball team of overprotective brothers, but that doesn’t stop her being snatched one day when her mother turns her back for an instant to pick up her bottle. The more Qi-mao searches for his daughter, the more he becomes convinced that she was stolen to order and the hospital is somehow involved. After getting too close to the truth, he’s framed for murder and sent to prison for 18 years during which he plans his bloody revenge.

What he uncovers is a vast ring of human trafficking run through the dark web in which rich people can buy poor ones and harvest their organs to save those they love rather than waiting for a good candidate to present themselves. This is apparently what filthy rich businessman Xu did when his newborn daughter needed a heart, so Qi-mao is led to believe his daughter must be dead but is after answers and the location of her body more than to expose the network which appears deeply entrenched among the elite because it so very lucrative. Yet if Qi-mao is going to all this trouble now, perhaps he may have done the same as Xu if the situation were reversed. He appears blasé about putting other people’s children in danger while torturing their parents to get to the truth even if as it turns out he may not have actually intended to harm them. Just like him desperate to save their child, the parents largely give in when they are threatened and promise to tell him everything he wants to know if only he let them go. 

But there is something quite insidious in Xu’s plan given that it may be one thing to buy a living body off a website and never have to think about the person whose life will sacrificed, but quite another to be prepared to kill someone that trusts and loves you. Xu uses his money to employ a poor yet oblivious family while collaborating with a hospital to fake medical records and manipulate his daughter Qiao who thinks the biggest problem in her life is her forbidden romance with the son of one of their servants, again echoing the class divide that makes Xu think he can do what he likes with those he feels to be lesser than himself. The real “family” turns out to be that created by the orphans which is then spread to the younger generation who are eventually freed from their parents’ corruption and the boundaries of class to live in a freer world less bound by capitalistic imperative than simple solidarity. 

But for all that, Qi-mao is orphaned too in realising that even if his daughter were alive and he could still save her, she likely wouldn’t accept the man he’s become. Qi-mao is man of rage and vengeance. He brutally tortures those connected with his daughter’s disappearance and commits acts of heinous violence that render him unable to return to mainstream society despite his position as an idealised father figure to the orphan boys. A subplot about sexual abuse at the orphanage is under explored, but hints at the institutionalised corruption in which the powerless can be exploited by those in power when no one cares enough to stop them. Qi-mao may not really care that much about opposing the system, but certainly does about the boys and his missing daughter as he wades into hell in search of answers but also retribution. 

Organ Child screens 27th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Behind the Shadows (私家偵探, Jonathan Li Tsz-Chun & Chou Man-Yu, 2025)

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“At our age, we do what we have to do instead of obsessing over the good old days,” according to a put upon wife sick of waiting for her husband to make good on his promises. Jonathan Li Tsz-Chun and Chou Man-Yu’s Malaysia-set drama Behind the Shadows (私家偵探) is in its way as much about the disconnect in modern romance which has now been corrupted by capitalistic desires and frustrated notions of traditional masculinity as its central mystery. 

As someone says, in the old days women hired private detectives to chase their men, but now it’s the other way around. In someways, the parade of men rocking up at Wai-yip’s (Louis Koo Tin-lok) office to hire him to follow their wives, girlfriends, or women with whom they may not actually have much of a connection, all seem to be trying to regain control over their lives by asserting it over a lover they fear has betrayed them. Ironically, this is sort of true of Wai-yip too in that he’s taken to spending his evenings at his friend’s restaurant to escape his moribund marriage. When one customer brings him a photo of his own wife, Kuan (Chrissie Chau Sau-na), little knowing he’s the other man Wai-yip is irate but not as surprised as might be expected. Still, he hands the case off to a junior associate and tries to avoid thinking about it while otherwise passively seething about his wife’s potential betrayal.

But the ironic thing is that Kuan might only have done this to get Wai-yip’s attention and force him to confront their fracturing relationship. While Wai-yip hangs back, tries to act with maturity, and struggles to accept his wife’s decision, she privately wants him to fight back, to shout at her or punch her lover as a sign of manly love. She attacks his masculinity by berating him for being work-shy and refusing to have a child because they can’t afford it, though she can support them all on her salary, while Wai-yip remains hung up on the lost glory of his life in Hong Kong which he gave up to marry Kuan and move to Malaysia. The suggestion is that Wai-yip has been trapped in a kind of limbo, unable to let go of the past and embrace his new life and now Kuan is sick of waiting for him. 

The circumstances of his own marriage and the cynicism of 20 years spent chasing cheating spouses cause Wai-yip to be wary when a man comes and asks him to look for a runaway fiancée. He wonders if they’ve just had a tiff, if she’s left because the man was violent or unfaithful, or if the man is delusional and the woman doesn’t believe herself to be in a relationship with him and so is just happily living her own life. Along with all these anxieties is his sense of responsibility in knowing that this woman may be in danger if he finds her, as will Betty if Wai-yip manages to uncover evidence of her infidelity and relays it back to her gangster boyfriend. Like Kuan, Betty (Renci Yeung Sz-wing) says she just wants a man who will listen to her when she wants to talk and is half-minded to let Wai-yip send the video to find out if the gang boss cares about her enough to actually do anything about it. 

But the consequences of inaction are also brought home to Wai-yip when one of the women he’s following is murdered after he leaves his investigation to chase Kuan and her lover. Trying to makeup for his failure brings him into contact with a zombified cop, Chen (Liu Kuan-ting), whose wife is in a coma after a car accident. While Chen’s solicitous care and repeated pleading that his wife wake up may paint him as a lovelorn man, the marks on her arm that perfectly fit his fingers suggest a violent and controlling past along with a thinly concealed rage that she may have escaped him at last. “There’s nothing much the police can’t do,” he ominously tells Wai-yip while hinting at his desire for authoritarian control as mediated through the patriarchal institution of the police force and his rejection of a woman’s sexual freedom. Wai-yip feels similarly trapped as his own increasing sense of inadequacy deepens the gap between his wife and himself that leaves him unable to have an honest conversation with her about how he really feels and prevents him from healing the rifts within his own marriage even as he chases answers on behalf of other insecure men. What he indeed realises is that it’s time to move on from the past and live in the present, though as it turns out not even he may be strong enough to leave his insecurities behind. 

Behind the Shadows screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

How Dare You? (ふつうの子ども, Mipo O, 2025)

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“I told you to shut up about that,” Kokoa’s mother (Kumi Takiuchi) tells her after she gets caught with two other children trying to start an environmental revolution by releasing cows from their paddock. It’s not difficult to see why Kokoa (Ruri) feels so strongly about global warming even if it’s probably her home environment that she most wants to change given adult indifference to climate issues, though Mipo O’s charming family dramedy How Dare You? (ふつうの子ども, Futsu no Kodomo) is less about the issues themselves than the relationships between the children and the adults around them.

The point being that Kokoa hates adults for trashing the world and creating an environment in which she feels it’s impossible to live. Fellow student Yuishi (Tetta Shimada) is drawn to her Greta Thunberg-style speech in class having just embarrassed himself with an essay about his toilet habits and suddenly develops an interest in the environment as a means of getting close to her. Which isn’t to say that he didn’t really care before. In this semi-rural area, he and his friends still go outside every day to catch woodlice to feed his friend Soma’s lizards, and Yuishi is also very keen on animals in general. He’s sympathetic to the cause, but on the other hand, is only really into this because of Kokoa who pretty much ignores him in favour of class bad boy Haruto (Yota Mimoto) who tells her that they need to take “action” to wake the adults up or no one’s going to listen to a bunch of kids whining about methane emissions. 

There is something pleasantly old-fashioned about their tactics which include cutting letters out of magazines to make protest signs they hang up all over town telling people not buy so much stuff, eat meat, or drive cars. But while the other two are increasingly emboldened their actions and their revolutionary activities begin to get out of hand, Yuishi finds himself conflicted. When they spot similar signs springing up made by other kids they don’t know, Kokoa and Haruto are annoyed rather than pleased that more people are joining the cause. Yuishi agrees with a sign saying people should catch the bus because it’s better than driving a car even if buses also pollute while Haruto opposes it. But he also points out that the firework rockets Haruto has bought for another action give off CO2, so perhaps they shouldn’t use them. He tries to deescalate and avoids becoming radicalised, but is eventually bullied into going along with the other two and suggests releasing the local farmer’s cows as their next protest assuming it’s a “nice” thing to do and less aggressive than some of Haruto’s ideas.

But they’re still just children and don’t really understand the consequences of their actions. After all, what’s a wild cow supposed to do? It doesn’t occur to them that the cows could get hurt or end up causing accidents and damage, let alone that they may alienate the local community who are already fed up with their stunts because it’s affecting their livelihoods. Of course, this is also part of the problem. The adults ignore the children because what they’re saying is inconvenient for the way they live their lives under capitalism which isn’t something they think they could change even if they wanted to which they likely don’t. Yuishi’s sympathetic mother is forever reading books about how to raise children well, and so she tries to listen to Yuishi but also “corrects” him in subtle ways like hiding meat in his spring roll after he tells he wants to give up eating it for the environment. Though she may have correctly assumed that he’s not really serious about it and tells him what she’s done after his first bite of the spring roll, there’s no getting around the fact that just as Kokoa said she’s not really listening. Nor does she sort her rubbish and recycling responsibly. When Yuishi looks up global warming on his tablet, his mother remembers being told about this at school too, which just goes to show how long this has been going on and how easily everyone forgot about the ozone layer panic of 1980s and 90s.

Nevertheless, the gradual escalation of the children’s activities towards something akin to ecoterrorism echoing the student protest movement on the 1960s satirises the dangers of radicalisation especially as neither of the boys are really invested in the cause and are only there because they’re each drawn to Kokoa who remains intense and implacable. Their true natures are exposed when they’re caught with only Yuishi stoic and remorseful, admitting it was his idea to release the cows and that he did it because he liked Kokoa and wanted her to like him back, while Haruto spends the entire time crying in his mother’s arms and Kokoa glares at everyone while reciting environmental statistics. Maybe she isn’t overly invested either so much as trying to regain control over her life and using cold hard facts as an escape from her overbearing mother who liked her better when she was “sweet” and ‘cute” and never asked any inconvenient questions. Even so, there is something very charming about the children’s earnestness that’s largely lost on the well-meaning adults around them who may be trying their best in lots of other ways but have already given in to the idea that the world can’t be changed and nothing they do makes a difference so there’s no point doing anything. Yuishi at least has learned some valuable lessons, if only that things go better when you’re straightforward and honest your feelings even if it might be embarrassing in the moment.

How Dare You? screens 20th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Somebody (침범, Kim Yeo-jung & Lee Jeong-chan, 2024)

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“A mother should do everything to protect her child,” according to one young woman, but are there, or perhaps should there be, limits even to a mother’s love? Adapted from a webtoon, Kim Yeo-jung and Lee Jeong-chan’s Somebody (침범, Chimbeom) is really about what it means to be a family and who it is that gets to be included in one more than it is about its otherwise outlandish premise or how we should deal with young children who have severe mental health issues accompanied by violent tendencies. 

Then again, as So-hyun (Gi So-yoo) herself says she isn’t like the others and in that sense not necessarily good or bad but only what she is. It’s obvious that she has no understanding of conventionally held notions of right and wrong and actively enjoys inflicting pain on others, perhaps because as she later says it’s when she feels people are being most honest. She’s only seven years old, but she’s already been expelled from several schools and nurseries for scaring the other children, and her mother now locks all the sharp implements away at night having previously woken up to So-hyun slashing away at her arms and legs. But in a paradoxical way, it’s abandonment that So-hyun fears the most in knowing that her mother cannot fully accept what she is, while Young-eun (Kwak Sun-young) does her best to “protect” her at the cost of her own mental and physical health. 

So-hyun’s parents’ got a divorce because her father felt she could be better cared for in an institution, while Young-eun was determined to care for her herself despite the fact that So-hyun’s behaviour is not improving even with therapy and she continues to be a threat to those around her. This is particularly true of other girls her age towards whom she becomes jealous when they approach her mother as if they meant to replace her in Young-eun’s affections and So-hyun would lose her home. The film’s Korean title translates more literally as “invasion”, and this fear of being pushed out and excluded that motivates the actions all concerned.

20 years later, we’re introduced to Min (Kwon Yu-ri), who is living with an older woman, Hyun-kyung (Shin Dong-mi), who lost her daughter, it’s implied to suicide, while her own mother lives in a psychiatric institution. Though she is reserved and emotionally distant, Min has taken the place of Hyun-kyung’s daughter only to find it threatened when they take on another young woman, Hae-young (Lee Seol), to help with their business clearing houses after lonely deaths. Min too fears invasion, that Hae-young has come to kick her out and take her place by monopolising Hyun-kyung’s position as their “mother” in this accidental “family” unit. Hyun-kyung too fears abandonment, knowing what it’s like to be left alone and only too happy to become a maternal figure to these two orphaned young women each in search of a place to belong.  

But there’s also a question mark over whether someone like So-hyun whose brain is wired differently can ever be accepted into a conventional family unit. She has no understanding of human empathy, but simultaneously longs to be loved and accepted and is resentful that she doesn’t feel herself to be even by her mother or other maternal figures whom she believes owe her all those things. Min too seems to have a dark past and on discovering that she has become pregnant by an apparently controlling and violent boyfriend struggles with the decision of whether to keep the child. She fears that she may turn out to be like her own mother and does not particularly seem to want to raise it, but at the same time reflects that the baby has done nothing wrong and therefore it’s unfair to prevent it from being born. 

So-hyun also insists that she’s done nothing “wrong,” though her understanding of what “wrong” means is obviously different from most people’s. She expects unconditional love from her mother, and Young-eun gives it to her to the best of her ability despite the fact that she is afraid of her daughter and ultimately at a loss as to how best to protect her and also the outside world. Though at times hamstrung by its webtoon origins, Kim and Lee’s handsomely lensed thriller explores this the irony in this need for maternal acceptance with a genuine sense of poignancy and more than a little sympathy for the “inhuman” So-hyun if also terror of the hell she creates around her in her constant quest to find a place where she can truly be herself.

Somebody screens 20th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)