Tag: 2026

The Butcher’s Blade (手遮天, Liu Wenpu, 2026)

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Laws are meaningless if no one’s prepared to enforce them. According to the opening titles of The Butcher’s Blade (手遮天, shǒu zhē tiān), the Song had a complicated criminal code with lots of rules to be followed. However, in the real world, they only really apply to certain people. Xue Buyi (Liu Fengchao) has been a constable for 10 years but has become a bitter, broken man who feels himself to be a coward for remaining complicit with this corrupt regime.

A courtesan reports the local coffin maker for rape and violence having slashed her face and thereby not just physically and psychologically harmed her, but destroyed her livelihood. The courtesans complain they’ve reported him before and that no one helps them because they’re not the sort of people who matter in this world. Buyi announces he’ll get them justice and does indeed arrest the coffin maker, but the villagers then turn against him. The coffin maker is well connected and Buyi’s boss lets him go. The courtesans are unsurprised but disappointed, while Buyi’s self-loathing only deepens. His pride and masculinity are further eroded when he tries to help a woman selling noodles that he’s fond of fend off an exploitative landlord who’s been upping the rent in an attempt to coerce her into a sexual relationship. Wei simply asks him for the money instead, but Buyi has nary a penny to his name. Deliberately humiliating him, Wei makes Buyi drink flasks of soy sauce in exchange for reducing Erniang’s (Gao Weiman) debt which Buyi does until Erniang puts a stop to it.

Given all that, it’s easy to see why he might turn to the dark side and allow this world to remake him in its image. The war inside him is between his upbringing as a pupil of Eagle Hall, a brutal police training facility designed to churn out thugs who heartlessly carry out the will of the powers that be, and his natural compassion which baulks at the brutal torture and murder expected of him as a law enforcement official. Buyi is directly contrasted with former colleague Li Zhen (Yuan Fufu) who is keen to get him back on side and working for Eagle Hall, while Buyi struggles with himself over the degree of moral comprise he’s comfortable accepting to be one of Huang’s elite policemen. By remaining complicit, he hopes he can get the money to save Erniang’s noodle stall and protect her from Wei, but she quite obviously can’t stand what Buyi is becoming and didn’t envisage having brutal policemen as her main clientele.

There seems to be a subversive allusion to the present day in the world that surrounds Buyi which is filled with corrupt officials and supported by a rotten regime that policemen like him prop up with thuggish authoritarianism, serving the interests of the powerful over those of the people. Buyi finds himself at the centre of conspiracy when he takes a job guarding government funds intended for disaster relief in the hope of getting extra money to help Erniang only to be accused of robbing the place himself. Recruited by former mentor Huang (Chunyu Shanshan), he witnesses his indifference to the disaster victims who have largely fallen into exploitation at the hands of corrupt landowner Wei. Huang plans to sacrifice them for his own personal gain by framing them as a revolutionary army led by a rival official seeking to overturn the regime which he will then heroically surpress. 

Buyi, however, has to decide whether he can really continue going along with all this or rise up to resist it. Liu Wenpu frames Buyi’s intervention in heroic terms in which he’s surrounded by an eerie blue glow and the sound of firecrackers as he finally decides that he can’t let people like Huang continue with their authoritarianism and indifference towards the welfare of the people. His rebellion, however, seems to make himself something of an outlaw condemned to a life of wandering while ultimately pointless. Huang was just one many and now others are trying to use his fate as a means of advancing their own position. The elegantly choreographed fight scenes take on a symbolic quality as Buyi progresses towards his showdown with Huang while battling himself and his inner conflict, torn between the what it takes to succeed in a world as corrupt as this and his essential humanity before finally coming down on the side of justice for all rather than continuing to serve the interests of an exploitative elite.

The Butcher’s Blade is released on Digital in the US on May 4 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Humint (휴민트, Ryoo Seung-wan, 2026)

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There’s something ironically dehumanising about the term “human intelligence”. Even the security services who court them seem to look down on their informants, viewing them more as traitors to their own side than those who’ve come over theirs. We have to ask ourselves if either side is really any better than the other. As Zo’s boss tells him, everyone’s just using each other to survive. There doesn’t seem to be a lot more to this world than that, just desperate struggle and cynicism.

Ryoo Seung-wan’s Humint (휴민트) is, like many similar films, at least as equally critical of the South as it is the North as the idealistic NIS officer finds himself an outlier among his comparatively coldhearted colleagues. In the course of his mission trying to find out who’s selling drugs to teenagers in Korea, Zo (Zo In-sung) uncovers a human trafficking network operated by the Russian mafia targeting North Korean women possibly with the complicity of their government. But his bosses don’t care about that, they just want the drugs, and it’s a bonus that they come from the North. Zo dangles the possibility of salvation in front of a woman trapped in a South East Asian brothel, but when it comes down to it, his boss won’t approve her rescue. They’ve effectively killed her, but all his boss tells him is that you have to get used to this sort of thing and you can’t afford to get hung up on each and every informant.

Still, what they’re asking them to do is necessarily dangerous and any promise they may make about protecting their informants is a lie. On the other side, the North sends young women to Vladivostok as “foreign currency earners” ostensibly working in a restaurant, but actually used as honeytraps drugging their clients and sleeping with them to get them hooked. Seon Hwa (Shin Se-kyung) is, ironically, in this position because the North does not seem to have kept its promises either. Her mother has advanced cancer, but her treatment needs money and so her father started smuggling to get it. When he got caught, her whole family was disgraced. She had to drop out of university and begin working as a foreign currency earner, breaking her engagement with top torturer Geon (Park Jeong-min). Geon is in town because he suspects the locale consular official is complicit with a series of mysterious disappearances of North Koreans near the Russian border, and he’s right. 

Hwang (Park Hae-joon) is certainly a slippery individual, apparently making Vladivostok his own personal fiefdom and, in the end, over playing his hand in trying to use Seon Hwa to take out Geon when he could probably just have let her go to make Geon leave him alone. “Do what you have to do to survive”, most people seem to say and it’s clear that personal relationships cannot reallysurive in this world in which human life is cheap. Seon Hwa and Geon’s romance was broken by the brutality of the North Korean regime, but it seems that the South is unwilling to save them. When Zo realises that Seon Hwa’s cover has been blown, he breaks protocol to try and save her, not wanting another woman’s death on his conscience. But though he unmasks the human trafficking ring, he’s reprimanded by his superiors who still complain that they’ve not made enough progress on the drugs case because Zo got sidetracked by the trafficked women. 

The women are, obviously, the ones who suffer because of these too regimes and perhaps by extension the division of Korea. Seon Hwa does her best to fight back, saving the other women so they can escape together, but is finally left with nothing. She has no country, and only asks to be sent somewhere where nobody knows her to start again. Expressing a new cold war anxiety born of geopolitical fluctuations as the South contends with the uncertainties of the North’s interplay with Russia and China, Ryoo’s espionage thriller has a retro quality, but also hints at contemporary unease, suggesting finally that there are really no good guys left and even idealists like Zo are compromised by their allegiance to an inhuman regime. Zo and Geon may become temporary allies in their quest to save Seon Hwa, but just as often point their guns a each other in Ryoo’s impressively staged action scenes amid a constant atmosphere of mistrust and betrayal.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Bunny!! (Thỏ Ơi!!, Trấn Thành, 2026)

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The host of a TV show offering love advice begins to reassess her marriage when probed by a guest who turns out to have an unexpected connection to her personal life in Trấn Thành’s outlandish drama, Bunny!! (Thỏ Ơi!!) Though it may originally seem as if the film intends to sympathise with female oppression in a male dominated society, it soon swings back with a more conservative conclusion in which the heroine seems to blame herself for the issues she uncovers in a marriage she assumed to be perfect.

Linh (Lyly) hosts a show in the guise of the “Shoulder Sister” in which she gives relationship advice to mainly female guests who wear animal masks to disguise their identity and are hidden from her in an adjacent room. She and her husband Phong (Vĩnh Đam) are currently living with her sister, Lan (Văn Mai Hương), who has her own business empire and is married to a younger man, Son (Quốc Anh). Lan is intensely jealous and henpecks her husband, becoming incredibly angry and upset when she goes through his phone and finds a picture from a party he was at that an ex-girlfriend apparently also attended. Linh is scandalised that her sister’s friends think setting your partner’s pin and trawling through their message is normal behaviour, insisting that she has no need for that and is completely confident in her relationship with Phong. 

But the film opens with her filming footage for YouTube of a “romantic date” during which she snaps at Phong and later rejects his attempts to initiate intimacy. The film characterises the two sisters as bossy and finds humour in the way they manipulate their husbands, but at the same time locates the source of marital breakdown in their career success and independence, even suggesting that all their problems are down to not listening to the their husbands. Of course, it’s not sexist to suggest that communication issues can derail a marriage, but the conversation needs to flow both ways. Linh confronts Phong when she she begins to suspect him of having an affair, but he turns it back on her and says he feels lonely in their marriage because she doesn’t have time for him any more while showing few signs of being willing to take time out of his career as an executive at her sister’s company. It’s difficult for her to tell whether he has a point that she’s essentially self-involved and afraid of confrontation, refusing his requests to talk by placing a time limit on arguments and unilaterally making decisions rather than trying to reach a compromise or give Phong a chance to understand, or is just trying to gaslight her by making her think this is all her fault so she doesn’t look too closely at his behaviour.

The advice she’d give another woman would be to leave at the first sign of trouble, which is what she tells Bunny (Pháo) when she comes on the show looking for advice about how to leave an abusive partner. Though she’s tried to break up with him several times, Bunny’s ex, Kim (Trấn Thành), has been stalking and threatening her. Asked why she didn’t leave earlier, she replies that it’s hard to leave someone who really loves you, which is an odd characterisation of this obsessive connection. Nevertheless, when she comes back later saying she was able to break things off with Kim but has drifted into an affair with a married man, it becomes difficult for Linh to assess whether she got her nickname for being a bunny boiler and is stalking a man who isn’t interested, or has been tricked by the false promises of a cheating louse who told her he was “separated” and just waiting for the paperwork to come through on his divorce.

Nevertheless, Bunny too is made to feel guilty and responsible for Kim’s behaviour because he lost his leg in a traffic accident while working hard to contribute to their future. Uncomfortably, the film makes Kim’s disability the butt of a joke while also using it to undercut his masculinity by suggesting that no other women will want him nor will he be able to find steady employment. All of which is presented as justification for his controlling behaviour which grows steadily more concerning just as Bunny’s own pursuit of her married lover is depicted by some as that of a crazed and lovelorn woman no better than Kim. 

In the end, however, the solution is found in female solidarity with Linh listening to Bunny’s story and protecting her while Lan’s friends provide essential emotional support as she tries to sort things out with Son to make their marriage a little less volatile. But the revelations of the finale would seem to undercut all of that as Linh asks herself once again if she really was at fault for neglecting her husband and is therefore responsible for the way that he behaved rather than condemning his emotional cowardice and the way it led him to treat Linh and others. As such it reinforces some conservative ideas about a wife’s role and female subservience rather than allowing Linh to reassess her view of a “perfect” marriage and ask herself if she’s really happy or merely in love with an idealised image of marital success.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Hole, 309 Days to the Bloodiest Tragedy (Bolong, 309 Hari Sebelum Tragedi Berdarah, Hanung Bramantyo, 2026)

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There’s something about a hole in the ground that invites mystery. Who put it there and why, where does it lead, and should we be worried about people falling in or what might crawl out of there that someone or something might have wished stayed buried. Hanung Bramantyo’s The Hole (Bolong, 309 Hari Sebelum Tragedi Berdarah) digs back to the Indonesia of the mid-1960s in which one kind of authoritarian rule is dying while the new had not yet been born. His hero finds himself torn between conflicting loyalties while straddling class boundaries as he searches for a potentially inconvenient truth behind the murders of several local officials.

The opening title cards tell us that this story takes place before a “national tragedy” in which seven army officers were murdered and their bodies thrown into a well during the 30 September Movement’s failed coup attempt. The killings are blamed both on “the communists” and perhaps on the army engaging in some questionable manoeuvres of its own. Sugeng (Baskara Mahendra) is charged with finding out the truth in order to rehabilitate the army’s image. He’s also made aware, however, that the village lies in a convenient spot for anyone who might be looking to launch a coup against Sukarno, which presumably includes Suharto. 

But what he quickly finds is that each of the dead men arguably deserved it and that the list of people who might have wanted them gone is quite long even before you start adding in ghosts. Each of them is someone with legitimate political power that they have enthusiastically misused. The village head Sumanto said he’d fix local infrastructure but embezzled the money for himself while bribing the police chief to turn a blind eye. The village secretary scammed the local farmers and trapped them in debt. Dependent on these authority figures, the locals were powerless to oppose them and those who attempted to speak out were quickly silenced. 

Some attribute these killings to the communists for that reason in that taking out corrupt officials is in line with their ideology, though it could just as likely be a person or group of people fed up with living under this system as Sukarno’s “guided democracy” began to fall apart due to its increasing dependence on China and Russia which further inflamed the nationalists and military. Sukarno had indeed based his system of government on a traditional village, but this one is rotten to the core as the corrupt officials all protect each other. Others argue that the killings are the revenge of a “hollow ghost,” and even if some are as dismissive of the supernatural as educated policeman Sugeneng, the term could perhaps stand in for many who have been hollowed out by governmental betrayal and pushed beyond breaking point. 

Sugeng may not believe in ghosts, but he stands in an awkward position. He was a adopted as a child by a wealthy man from just that village who is now on his deathbed. Sugeng’s adoptive father badgers him into marrying his adopted sister, Arum (Carissa Perusset), though he feels uncomfortable with it and even if assured by his imam that there’s nothing untoward about the arrangement still thinks of Arum as a sister. It’s tempting then to think that his present predicament is caused by the breaking of a taboo, or that, as an adopted son, he’s inherited a dark legacy stemming from his father’s wealth and privilege while doing his best to forget his roots and inhabit this new upper-class world. Back in the village, one of the guards on duty at the time of the murder pranked a friend with a black magic book made to look like the Quran, and perhaps it’s not so far-fetched to consider that dark sorcery is a possible cause for the strange events.

Sugeng, however, has no idea what he’s up against. He can’t see the political context nor his family’s fading fortunes nor is he really prepared for the truth behind the murders. It doesn’t quite occur to him that there might be a dark truth within his own household and callously ignores his new’s complaints about being chased by ghosts, focussing on his case and rarely coming home as she tries to care for her dying father alone. The holes here are the one’s in Sugeng’s, and the nation’s, buried histories, but it’s all still there and waiting to be unearthed. “The nation is not in a good state,” Sugeng’s imam friend warns him, and it seems that you can’t really blame anyone for turning to one dark side or another when things are as bad and confusing as they currently seem to be.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe (熊猫计划之部落奇遇记, Derek Hui Wang-Yu, 2026)

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Adorable CGI panda Huhu may have been a symbol of Chinese sovereignty in the original Panda Plan, eventually rescued by Jackie Chan and returned to a panda sanctuary on the Mainland. In Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe (熊猫计划之部落奇遇记, xióngmāo jìhuà zhī bùluò qíyù jì), however, which doesn’t actually have much in common with the first film, she’s more like a surrogate child who must be protected, but not to the extent that it stunts her growth or robs of her of the confidence to make her own decisions, after mysteriously entering the territory of a “magical tribe” where children are expected to independent at six and hugs are taboo.

The humour is distinctly old-fashioned and the way the film treats the hidden indigenous community at its centre, which conveniently speaks Mandarin even if its writing system is apparently different, seems insensitive and out-of-touch. Nevertheless, the problem here seems to be emotional austerity and, by extension, an authoritarian parenting style that ironically leaves children in an arrested state of development. Fairly useless princeling Telu (Yu Yang), who goes around wearing a crown, is ridiculed for addressing the chieftain (Ma Li) as “mom”, which might, in any case, be a little childish though reflects his sense of inadequacy and desire for maternal affection. When Huhu and Jackie arrive in this strange world, the panda-worshipping tribe thinks it’s part of a prophecy that says that disaster will prevail after the Great Creature arrives which could turn to prosperity if only they could ward it off. 

This, however, requires Chan and Huhu to scale an impossible mountain so that Huhu can call the gods from an unreachable summit. Some of the tribesmen claim not to like it that an outsider is guiding Huhu to the mountain and use it to cultivate intrigue by convincing Telu to try and win his mother’s favour by killing Chan and leading Huhu to the mountain himself. Chan, meanwhile, is intent on finding a way back to the regular world as soon as possible, only to end up in a strange relationship with his would-be-assassin. Qiangshan (Qiao Shan) seems to have some kind of Tiresias syndrome and changes sex every time he gets hit on the head. The film treats this as a mildly homophobic joke as Qiangsheng begins to act in stereotypically feminine ways while creating a domestic environment for Chan by taking him into his home, cooking and cleaning for him. 

Nevertheless, the later part of the film is concerned with the necessity of moving on from “outdated” rules such as the prohibition on shows of affection. The chieftain makes a show of smashing the stone tablets to make it clear that they’re setting themselves free from past oppressions to lead lives that are more emotionally healthy. Chan gives them some ironic advice about the importance of good parenting that focuses on encouragement and praise that give the chid the confidence to thrive, rather than punishment and discipline that leave them feeling afraid and insecure leading to poor decision making.

This being a Lunar New Year release, it’s not surprising that the focus is family, though the family in question here increasingly seems to point towards the Chinese people as a whole. Only by standing together can we overcome hardship, Chan tells the tribe while eventually coming up with the idea of a human pyramid as an expression of solidarity that helps the nation reach the summit. We must hug each other tightly, he adds, as the tribe arranges itself into a rugby scrum and the lower levels bear the strain, creating the tension that allows others to climb higher. Little Huhu can’t complete the village’s test of climbing a pole with all the strangers prodding her behind and shouting, but eventually does something similar on her own while chasing a butterfly whose name is later said to be “encouragement.”

The giant Wicker Panda in the tribe’s central square might never come into use, but lends an ominous air to this weird place that is originally not very hospitable to Chan but eventually comes to believe he’s some sort of prophet serving their Great Creature and can help them avert the oncoming catastrophe mostly by teaching them that it’s alright to hug it out and there’s nothing embarrassing about telling your family that you love them. Relatively light on action, the film focuses on bizarre comedy while rooting itself in its wholesome-seeming but perhaps self-serving message of the importance of family, solidarity, and encouraging others rather than putting them down as Chan and Huhu do their best to avert disaster and return to their previous lives.

Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe in released in US cinemas on April 17 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Loved One (Irene Emma Villamor, 2026)

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It may be true that within every relationship there is the lover and the one who is loved and that love is generally unequal. At least, Eric (Jericho Rosales) feels himself to have been the lover and is resentful that Ellie (Anne Curtis) did not seem to love him as much as he loved her, but the irony is that Ellie may feel the same. She kept trying to get through to Eric, but he never really seemed to listen to her nor did she feel him to be very interested in who she actually was as opposed to what he wanted her to be. 

In any case, it’s clear from the offset that Eric and Ellie are entirely unsuited. The qualities that once drew them to each other are exactly those which later drive them apart. Told mainly from Eric’s perspective, the film nevertheless paints him as an incredibly dull person, which wouldn’t really be a problem in itself if he didn’t resent other people’s desire to go places and do things quite as much as he does. He’s a bit of a fuddy-duddy and, as his mother puts it, “traditional” which is to say socially conservative with some fairly right-wing, authoritarian views which are in direct contrast to Ellie’s bohemian outlook. Eric’s attracted to her because she’s a free spirit, a dynamic and mysterious young woman who likes to have fun but also wants to make a difference in the world. 

But Eric’s also insecure in himself and at the end of the day wants Ellie to lead a more conventional life. Ellie comes from money, and Eric can’t escape the sense of inferiority he feels around her upper-class parents who disparage his occupation on their first meeting and make no secret of the fact they think he’s not good enough for their daughter only to come round to him later. In some ways, Ellie may be attracted to him because he reminds her of her father and aside from his working-class background is exactly the sort of man she’s told she’s supposed to want. Nevertheless, he becomes jealous and controlling. He pushes marriage with thinly veiled desperation, as if by putting a ring on her finger he’d have won her forever. Ellie, meanwhile, tells him she doesn’t want to be “trapped” by him and has no interest in getting married. All she wants is to live with him, though Eric isn’t all that keen on the business of living so much as the external validation of social success through ticking off milestones like marriage and children and career achievement. 

Ellie doesn’t care about any of that. When she tells Eric that she’s quit her office job because the corporate life isn’t for her, he looks on in total horror as if he can’t believe someone would do something so foolish as to quit their job with no plan for the future. He puts up with it when she starts doing humanitarian work, but thinks of it as a hobby or a passing fancy and never takes it seriously. It doesn’t occur to him that something that doesn’t make money or improve one’s social standing could be fulfilling, and worse than that, he resents what he sees as Ellie’s unseriousness thinking that it’s born of the confidence and security that comes with privilege. If he once thought of her as a free spirit, he comes to see her as flaky and fails to notice that she is always growing and changing as she pursues the person she’s supposed to be while he remains defiantly as he is, resenting that everything is changing all around him. 

Still, Ellie keeps trying even though this relationship is clearly not working for her. She begins smoking to deal with her anxiety which mainly seems to be bundled up with her relationship with Eric and breaks down in tears listening to a woman trapped in an abusive marriage tells her of her struggles to leave while working at a women’s association. Eric is often cruel and thoughtless, selfish and controlling, pissed off when she talks to other men but flirting with a woman at work with whom he almost starts an affair. He thinks that “almost” is his saving grace, but really it doesn’t matter. Eric has treated both women disrespectfully and already cheated on Ellie emotionally if only in his reluctance to go home knowing that she’s there. The generous conclusion that Ellie comes to that they were both too much for each other. At the wedding where they reconnected, Ellie asked Eric if he thought their friends’ relationship would last and love was enough to see them through. Eric thought so, though she wasn’t so sure. It worked out for their friends who might not have had such a tempestuous love story and settled into a much more conventional married life, but no matter how much they may have loved each other, Eric and Ellie’s romance was always doomed. “How did they survive each other?” Ellie asks as she and Eric look on at an older couple celebrating a birthday surrounded by children and grandchildren, while all they’re left with is the smouldering embers of a failed love.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Moonglow (Isabel Sandoval, 2026)

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A conflicted policewoman is placed in charge of investigating a crime that she herself committed in Isabel Sandoval’s moody noir, Moonglow. In many ways about the deadening quality of life under authoritarianism, the film contemplates complicity and resistance along with the “paradise of progress” that is touted as the modern Philippines though it faces many of the same problems as in 1979. You may think of yourself as some kind of moral crusader, Dahlia’s aunt warns her, but you’re no match for them.

Sister Therese may have a point. The news is full of stories of abandoned bodies and mysterious fires. Dahlia (Isabel Sandoval) characterises her theft as an act of rebellion and retribution. She does not keep this large sum of money taken from her corrupt boss’ safe for herself, but gives it to her aunt, a nun, with the instruction that it’s to be used to help the victims of a slum fire that later turns out to have been orchestrated by the police chief who is getting kickbacks from construction firms and envisions a bright future for himself in politics. 

Going into politics seems to be the ultimate goal for many. Charlie (Arjo Atayde) was also being groomed for office, but chose to emigrate instead after being confronted by the ugly side of his family’s elite status. The nephew of police chief Bernal, he’s just returned from America to look after his ailing father having become a lawyer rather than law enforcement official. Nevertheless, Bernal appoints him to the investigation presumably assuming he’s a safe person to ask because he’s family and therefore no threat to him. Old flame Dahlia, however, remarks on meeting him again that he now wears glasses, as if signalling Charlie’s ability to see things with more clarity than those around him whose vision has been blurred by continued exposure to life under the Marcos regime.

Dahila, who chose to stay rather than leave with Charlie, has indeed been compromised and is to an extent at least complicit as an agent of authoritarian power and according to some Bernal’s right hand woman. She says herself that she’s summoned in ghost in Charlie’s return and is haunted by the person she was before along with that of lost love. Each of them have repeated flashbacks to a lavish party shortly before Marcos took power which seems to hint at the coming future as Bernal introduces a man soon to be governor who echoes the contemporary radio broadcasts speaking of an era of prosperity hovering the horizon.

Alvaro manipulates Bernal with promises to make him his political successor, while it’s clear that any “prosperity” to come will only be for some. They burn slums to seize the land for shopping malls and luxury apartments leaving hundreds of people homeless and others of them dead. Alvaro later implies that some of the stolen money has been used to get the victims legal representation to challenge the government, a power that he also believes to have been “stolen” in that they have no right to it. Indeed, the authorities silence contrary voices without compulsion offing an investigative journalist reporting on the fires and later coming after Dahlia. Charlie reminds her that Bernal would sacrifice anyone, and indeed later implies he may do so with him when he starts asking the wrong questions about how much money went missing from the safe. 

Yet Dahlia’s tragedy is that in the end she can’t escape herself or her past. She can’t make all of this right through her act of rebellion, but neither can she accept the ways in which she did not resist or leave as Charlie had. That other life is also haunting her. Sandoval’s frequent use of dissolves signals the foggy quality of life under authoritarianism in which it becomes impossible to think or see clearly when every moment is self preservation or active complicity. Past, present, and future come to co-exist with Dahlia stuck somewhere in between, longing for a return to an elusive past while fearing that the future is no longer possible. She and Charlie are now, as she says, different people. Their romance belongs to another era which has now become inaccessible, or perhaps existing only in the realms of memory as a painful reminder of that which could have been.

Moonglow screens in Amsterdam 11th/12th April as part of this year’s CinemAsia Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer (熱狂をこえて, Hiroaki Matsuoka, 2026)

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Hiroaki Matsuoka’s documentary Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer (熱狂をこえて, Nekkyo wo Koete) follows the life of Teishiro Minami who started the first Pride parade to take place in Japan in 1994. The film is not, however, an exercise in hagiography and examines Minami’s troubled legacy as someone whose attempts to control the movement ended up destroying it and leading to tragic and unforeseen circumstances. The parade has since been reborn under Tokyo Rainbow Pride which aims for greater inclusivity for sexual minorities and operates out of a community hub where all are welcome.

As for Minami, he was born in 1931 on the island of Sakhalin which was eventually taken by the Russians during the war. The family evacuated to Akita to live with his mother’s relatives, but his father refused to come with them and remained behind. This sense of physical dislocation and displacement only deepened Minami’s sense of rootlessness and lack of belonging having figured out his sexuality while hanging out with part-timers at his family’s shop. With his mother having to support the family single-handed, Minami was keen to start working and got a civil service job after high school working in the local prosecutor’s office. Once his father returned, he asked for a transfer to Tokyo and began looking for the mysterious “House of Secrets” and the gay world he’d read about in magazines.

But after failing to gain a promotion, Minami resigned due to a discomfort about the way of thinking at the prosecutor’s office. His repeated decisions to resign from most of the jobs he held echoes his forthrightness, but also an unwillingness to compromise or inability to work with others who might not agree with him. He quits his job in broadcasting in part because he overhears his colleagues using slur words and speaking disparagingly about men like him which makes his workplace an unpleasant and unsafe environment, though times being what they were he couldn’t exactly complain about it. Most of the men he meets at gay bars when he finally discovers them are unable to be out at work and some of them are married, only able to live their gay lives at weekends. Minami too gets married out of a sense of social obligation and to give his mother grandchildren. As an older man, he seems to feel guilty about the way he abandoned his wife and children to live a more authentic life, but also seeks no kind of reconciliation.

His path to Pride began with a series of gay-themed magazines and a meeting with international activist Bill Schiller who convinced him that the gay rights movement was something that could make a difference in Japan. Having travelled to San Francisco and witnessed the Pride parade there, he begins planning one in Japan but despite the success of the first event, internal divisions came to the fore. The biggest of these was that though Minami had followed Schiller’s example and included lesbians in the movement, he’d largely done it for cynical reasons and really had no interest in working with them, admitting to finding women difficult in general. Admitting now that he went too far, the real crisis arrived when Minami tried to turn the third Pride parade into an exclusively political event, banning outlandish outfits or celebratory behaviour. He intended the parade to end in a rally in which they’d adopt a manifesto he’d written by himself without discussing it with the wider community. When some of them protested, a member of Minami’s team was heard to ask what the women were even doing there, making it clear that the organising committee believed this to be an event solely for gay men. Minami then took back control by excluding women from the committee entirely.

In some ways, his story is a cautionary tale about how strong personalities with a need for control can derail a movement or risk turning it into a vanity project. A young man who’d worked as a part of Minami’s team and had stayed to mediate when protestors stormed the stage later took his own life in despair with the direction things had taken. Many had been uncertain a Pride parade would work in Japan given the levels of hostility and the risks involved for those taking part. Their fear was that no one would come, but attendance was much greater than expected and many joined the parade later, encouraged by seeing that others had already done so and they were not alone. Though many praise Minami’s efforts and activism, not only with the Pride parade but during the AIDS crisis, and acknowledge the importance of his courage in taking the first step towards creating a gay rights movement, they also question his methods and motivations. Using a mixture of animation, archive footage, and talking heads interviews, the film does its best to record this landmark moment in the history of Japan’s LGBTQ+ community through the eyes of an elder statesman but never shies away from his mistakes if only in seeking to learn from them.

Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Per Aspera Ad Astra (星河入梦, Han Yan, 2026)

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In the not too distant future, space travel has become normal and humans can reach the furthest corners of the universe through hyper stasis. However, long years spent in cryogenic sleep eventually damaged the sleepers’ brains. A solution was found in an AI program which allowed them to dream during the journey and, therefore, keep their brains active. Han Yan’s Per Aspera ad Astra (星河入梦, Xīnghé Rùmèng) makes a villain of a rogue AI but finally seems to come down on the idea that AI should be a tool used by humans rather the other way round while refusing to condemn it outright.

One question the film only partly answers is why people would be prepared to embark on decades-long journeys meaning they’d never see their families again. Neither Tianbao (Dylan Wang) nor the ship’s captain Simeng (Victoria Song) have living family members, so perhaps it isn’t a problem for them, but still it’s a risk. Who’s to say what the world will be like after you’ve been asleep for over 60 years. To that extent, perhaps it’s strange the technology doesn’t seem to move on at all, according to news reports, save a late upgrade to try and prevent the Good Dreams AI system from becoming sentient. 

That all these people got a big ship to sail for 65 years to do farming suggests that there may be serious issues on the ground, while the fact they were sent at all either implies a desire for imperialistic expansion in space or a search for a new home for humanity after we’ve exhausted the earth. Ge Yang (Wang Duo), another crew member, hints that the world might have problems in insisting that he doesn’t want to wake up. He’s prepared to crush everyone else’s dreams to ensure he keeps his and can stay here rather than having to go back to the real world. He says he wants to create a place that’s free of abuse and exploitation where no one has to live like a dog. 

The ironic thing is that engineer Bai (Zu Feng) had deliberately chosen to be a pet dog in his dream because, according to him, dogs have more freedom. Bai’s dreams seem to be inspired by classic Hong Kong crime cinema with everyone speaking Cantonese, even Tianbao and Simeng when they land there, while they also make a brief matrix-inspired appearance to shoot up the room. Of course, Good Dreams isn’t that much different from the Matrix and the line between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred with the pair getting caught out by dreams within dreams as they try to stop Ge Yang before he succeeds in smashing all the dreams together and killing his colleagues to create his “better” world. 

But it seems there’s something more going on than just Ge Yang’s nihilistic despair and Good Dreams may have gone rogue, preferring to create an AI-based world in which humanity is irrelevant. Tianbao also seems to know much more than he’s letting on which probably isn’t included in the standard crew member’s manual. His inappropriate way of speaking is later revealed to have a practical application, though what eventually seems to happen is that he becomes one with the system giving Good Dreams a soul and effectively taking it back into “human” hands rather than letting it run riot on its own. 

It is then slightly ironic that the film seems to feature some AI imagery, though otherwise largely shot on practical sets and featuring fantastic production design. Han zips back and forthe between dreams expressing the private aspirations and anxieties of the crew members as some relive high school exams and spend time with absent loved ones, and others trek through deserts or spend 60+ years in nightclubs. Only Tianbao apparently did not bother to customise his dream or engage with the system which is what brought him to its attention. In any case, humanity seems to be the most important component in the bonds that arise between Tianbao, the captain Simeng, and the engineer Bai as they try their best to save the ship along with their colleagues so they can complete their distant farming mission. A true visual spectacle, the film is perhaps also a testament to the power of dreams, to which the AI hallucination may pale in comparison.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The King’s Warden (왕과 사는 남자, Chang Hang-jun, 2026)

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Can a king govern effectively if he does not know his people? Korean historical films are renowned for palace intrigue, but what’s often forgotten is the lives of ordinary subjects living in far off villages for whom the ruler is a distant authority whose efforts are more likely to hamper their lives than help them. At the beginning of Chang Hang-jun’s The King’s Warden (왕과 사는 남자, Wanggwa Saneun Namja), village chief Heung-do (Yoo Hae-jin) goes out to hunt deer which is the only access to meat the villagers seem to have while many of them have only vague memories of ever having even seen hot white rice.

Still, after he’s chased by a tiger, Heung-do is rescued by a nearby village which is in full festival mode celebrating the birthday of the young son of a regular villager. The boy’s father makes fun of Heung-do for eating deer which he says smells bad and offers him some of their lavish banquet. This village used to be poor like his, but at some point they agreed to host an exiled official, the former Minister of Justice. Though the minister was rude and entitled, he soon began to start teaching the local children for something to do resulting in one of them becoming a top scholar. And political realities being what they are, the minister’s supporters began sending lavish gifts to the village to hedge their bets on his eventual rehabilitation. Shortly put, that’s how they’ve all become rich beyond their wildest dreams and all they had to do was put up with someone being difficult and annoying for a short period of time.

Obviously, Heung-do wants this for his village too, but unbeknownst to him they’re sent the deposed king Hong-wi (Park Ji-hoon) who ascended the throne as a child and has been usurped by his uncle. This obviously places them in a precarious position. Heung-do has to report to the Town Office on Hong-wi’s every move fearing that they’ll all be killed if anything happens to him, while the usurpers, led by treacherous courtier Myeong-hoe (Yoo Ji-tae), are actually banking on the fact that Hong-wi won’t be able to adjust to a life of exile having never lived outside of the palace and will likely either die or take his own life. For his own part, Hong-wi seems to have become depressed. He’s on a kind of hunger strike as a protest and later tries to end his life only to be saved Heung-do.

Hong-wi is indeed in a difficult position himself, still only a teenager and likely aware that there is only a small possibility of him surviving very much longer given that others make take up his cause and challenge his uncle’s claim to the throne which makes his mere existence an existential threat. Not having the power to do anything, refusing to eat is his only means of asserting control. Heung-do, meanwhile, is fairly ignorant of all this though tries his best to convey that Hong-wi refusing the food the villagers have prepared for him despite not having enough to eat themselves is both rude and causing them anxiety that perhaps it’s not to his taste and their commonness is killing him. 

It’s this more human kind of interaction that eventually brokers an easier friendship between the villagers the exiled king in which it seems as if Hong-wi would have “proved most royal” if he had not been usurped and continued to reign into adulthood. He has become better acquainted with the way his subjects live, while Myeong-hoe and his ilk are only concerned with power and courtly intrigue rather than the actual business of government. Nevertheless, in the end Heung-do must pick a master. To save the villagers he may need to sacrifice Hong-wi and demonstrate his loyalty to the new regime (who may or may not honour their promises), or else decide to risk being taken down with him if they continue to protect this man they’ve come to see as a friend and who is himself conflicted in the knowledge that his presence places them at risk.

Domestic viewers well acquainted with historical fact will know the direction that this story will eventually take, though the earlier parts of the film are largely concerned with village life in which the villagers great their hardship with good humour. As such, they never really question it but only look for ways to improve their circumstances and settle on making themselves even more subservient to authority, while even an exiled king finds himself entirely powerless within an inherently corrupt feudal system. The growing friendship between Heung-do, the villagers, and Hong-wi has then a poignant quality in their shared sense of futility and the glimpse of what might have been a better society for all if only Hong-wi had been allowed to follow his kingly destiny unfettered.

The King’s Warden opens in UK cinemas 6th March courtesy of Central City Media.

UK trailer (English subtitles)