Tag: 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer (English subtitles)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer (English subtitles)

A Girl Unknown (无名女孩, Zou Jing, 2026)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clip (English subtitles)

V (空枪, Han Yan, 2026)

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Hope (호프, Na Hong-jin, 2026)

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A decade on from The Wailing, Na Hong-jin returns with a piece of baffling hokum, Hope (호프), in which a small town close to the DMZ is assaulted by humanoid giants during the 1980s. Playing out like a satire of Hollywood monster movies, by the film’s abrupt cliffhanger ending we begin to get the impression that we’ve been watching from the wrong side of the screen. The “real” movie was a space fantasy revolving around the fall of an alien empire and the fate of a “chosen one”, while we’ve been seeing things from the perspective of an indigenous community witnessing the arrival of strange, new beings.

In any case, the first indication that something is “wrong” is the discovery of a mutilated cow by police chief Bum-seok’s (Hwang Jung-min) cousin Sung-ki (Zo In-sung). Sung-ki’s gang of hunters seem to think a tiger could be responsible, convincing Bum-seok that local wise man Hae-sul (Im Hyun-sik) said he saw one out in the mountains. Hae-sul did indeed see something, but according to his own reports, it was not a tiger. In any case, the hunters split off to investigate the mountains while Bum-seok returns to the town and finds it in a state of chaos. Bodies line the streets while buildings have been destroyed. Occasionally, he hears strange roars and sees cars flying overhead, thrown by some unknown force. 

The town itself has a frontier aesthetic like something out of an American western and unlike the Korea usually seen in the movies. There are signs reminding people to report spies and frustrate infiltration, reminding us that this is a paranoid place that has been on a war footing for around 30 years. Most of the residents are elderly and were, therefore, adults during the Korean War which explains why so many of them are so familiar with military weaponry and why there’s so much of it around including things like grenade launchers which aren’t generally used by the police. This is clearly not an invasion attempt from the North, though it explains why everyone is so keen to shoot first and ask questions later after decades of fearful vigilance.

This is first the hint we have that perhaps the heroes are the bad guys after all. While the first half sees Bum-seok and gung-ho policewoman Seung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon) desperately chasing the monster in their patrol car, Bum-seok begins to feel pity for it after looking into its human-like eyes and noticing that it appears to be crying. The idea that the real monsters maybe the heroes and, by implication, we in the audience isn’t a particularly original idea and is played with such unsubtlety that Na appears to be poking fun at the trope. There’s an unpleasantness to the degree with which the hunters in the particular rejoice in the idea of killing something so unusual. They aren’t so much brave young men of the village going off to kill the monster, as bloodthirsty animals little different from their prey. 

In fact, this whole mess started because one of the village’s more unusual residents killed something he shouldn’t have. Outside of the action sequences, the film is at its best exploring the weirdness of the small-town environment. There seems to be a running gag that where the men are panicked and confused, the women are ready to meet this moment with crazed determination such as Sung-ae turning up announced with machine guns, grenade launchers, and even a missile, or the female pathologist hacking away at the body of a fallen “monster” with a chainsaw. As the film concludes, the humans are on the run and in a panic with Bum-seok admitting he has no idea what to do, while Sung-ae at least as a kind of a plan even if it might not have much chance of success. There is, then, a rather thin line between defence aggression. In some respects, they may already have crossed it in their determination to fend off this “incursion’ and expel the “foreign elements” from the town. Nevertheless, there is a small ray of hope I the residents’ sudden coming together to resolve the unknown threat, even if their initial response to it is motivated by fear and ignorance.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Unchained (四月の余白,  Keisuke Yoshida, 2026)

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Can a person really change, or should we just accept that some people are born bad and can’t be accepted in mainstream society? This seems to be the question at the centre of Keisuke Yoshida’s empathetic drama Unchained (四月の余白, Shigatsu no Yohaku) which suggests, in a way, that violence is a vicious circle as society tends to write off those with behavioural issues pushing them deeper into their isolation and giving them little opportunity for reform or rehabilitation.

“Mister Nishi” (Wataru Ichinose), as he seems to be known, is a former delinquent who committed acts of heinous violence in his youth, spent time in prison, and experienced a personal tragedy that acted as a wake up call and gave him the opportunity to turn his life around. He now works at a kind of tough love bootcamp that attempts to guide wayward teens back towards the mainstream. His methods, however, are not universally approved and especially not by contemporary teachers. Though corporal punishment has long been outlawed in educational facilities, Nishi believes that sometimes there is no other way to reach these children and violence may be the only way to teach them that their actions have consequences. 

A teacher takes him to task and asks him if he isn’t just teaching them to be violent and in fact pushing them towards and anti-social behaviour. Nishi disagrees, but the film doesn’t really explore the alternative any further and more or less sides with Nishi. The children at the facility do seem to be doing better than they presumably were beforehand and do not appear to be unhappy there. It also seems that they are expected to do farm work, and it’s unclear if they’re being compensated for that, though this may be a slight cultural difference that is not raised in the film either by the documentary crew that comes to film the facility nor by a journalist who tries to take Nishi down by accusing him of fabricating details of his backstory which eventually leads to the facility closing down. 

Nishi may, however, have met his match in Kaito (Hayato Kohsaka), a violent young man exhibiting an extreme lack of empathy. Kaito’s teacher first seeks out Nishi because she’s at a loss of what else to do, while the boy’s mother appears to be a good woman who has tried everything she can and is now at the end of her tether. Kaito has become violent towards her too and apparently beat the family dog to death in a fit of rage for which he feels no remorse. The mother is beginning to feel suicidal and willing to try Nishi’s methods as a last-ditch effort to save her family. There is no clear reason why Kaito became this way. We get a hint of generational violence in that Kaito seems to resent his father who is disabled and in his view defeated by life. His father does seem to have become depressed because of his disability and it’s because of the depression and sense of worthlessness that he’s been unable to hold down a job and has taken to drink.

In a twist of fate, it turns out that it was Nishi who crushed his knee and left him permanently disabled. Kaito’s father therefore piles all of his resentment onto him without taking any responsibility for the choices he made himself after that. When Kaito ironically injures another boy in the same way, his father begins to realise his mistakes and cautions the other boy against becoming consumed by resentment or a sense of defeat. It’s this notion of “defeat” that becomes central to the interrogation of a cultural notion of toxic masculinity in which the reason some of these young men are thought to act out is that they don’t want to be seen as losers and harm others to prove their superiority. This is in part true of Kaito who declares himself happy to hurt other people as long as he himself does not get hurt. It’s not that he is incapable of understanding that others experience pain in the same way that he does, but that he simply does not really care. 

Some argue that Nishi doesn’t either and that, as he was a delinquent himself, he is incapable of fully sympathising with victims and only has empathy for those commit acts of violence. Nevertheless, that does give him a unique perspective that allows him to help some of these teens both by supporting them and being a positive role model as someone who has been able to reform and live a more mainstream, settled life. Then again, some seem dubious of the way he seems to change after the media takes interest which leaves him with less time for the children while chasing the spotlight. Ms. Kusano (Kaho), meanwhile, wonders if she did the right thing or perhaps just did what was easiest for her in abandoning Kaito into Nishi’s care. She chastises herself for having forgotten a model student who spoke to her at a reunion while uncertain if it’s right to devote so much of her time to kids like Kaito rather than supporting those he victimised such as student who withdrew from the school due to his bullying.

While a fellow teacher’s characterisation of Kaito as a”bad apple” who should be “discarded” before he causes any more trouble may seem callous, it’s also true that without his influence the other kids who’d been in his gang begin to straighten out and give more thought to their futures. Though he struggles at the facility, Kaito does seem to benefit in a way from a less stimulating environment and shows signs of change, if also of self-sabotage and an inability to walk away from his delinquent life for fear of being seen as a loser. It’s only after he’s cajoled into another act of violence and receiving kindness in return that he begins to see the error of his ways. The film seems to suggest, then, that person can change but that equally society has to let them, rather than try to tear them down as they did to Nishi in denying him his fresh start by reminding him that no apology is enough to change what he did in the past. While perhaps controversial in some of its implications, the film is at least empathetic and even handed, filmed in an unostentatious style that tries to sympathise both with the dealers and the receivers of violence in the conviction that there is no one who cannot change.

Unchainedscreened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Ah Girl (泡泡糖女孩, Ang Geck Geck, 2026)

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A young girl attempts to make sense of the world around her amid her parents’ acrimonious separation, but finally discovers that all she can rely on is herself in Ang Geck Geck’s autobiographically inspired drama Ah Girl (泡泡糖女孩). Set in the Singapore of the 1990s, the film casts its young heroine adrift without parental guidance or even a firm sense of home as each parent is, in their own way, immature and resentful of the responsibility of raising children.

That’s partly why Swee Swee and her tomboyish sister Ah Tian are mainly being raised by their paternal grandmother, supported financially by their mother who spoils them at weekends, and ignored by their father who has started a series of new relationships each with larger ladies, which is something that puzzles Swee Swee even as she begins to realise what’s going on. One evening, Swee Swee’s mother tearfully phones her, saying she’s found a flat she likes and swearing that Swee Swee can come and live with her when she’s saved enough money to secure it. Swee Swee’s mother makes no mention of Tian, which is another thing that worries Swee Swee as she finds herself adopting a maternal position over her sister.

Despite her mother’s tearfulness, it appears that she does not always want the children with her either. When Swee Swee injures her foot after becoming upset on a swing, her mother is annoyed to have been called at short notice and tells Swee Swee off rather than trying to comfort her or express concern for her injury. Though she is also stressed by the need to keep up with mortgage payments and secure their new home, she also embraces the freedom of her newly single life. While taking the girls to the swimming pool, she remains on the side reading a magazine rather than playing with them before ignoring her daughters completely to flirt with another man. In some ways, Swee Swee doesn’t mind. She prayed to god to ask for her mother’s happiness, and is glad that she seems to be doing better emotionally, but also feels neglected and pushed out.

When her mother asks her whom she’d like to live with in the future, Swee Swee diplomatically says she doesn’t know, though her mother obviously looks hurt. Tian immediately says she wants to stay with her father, but this may not actually be an option. The question only undermines Swee Swee’s faith in each of her parents as she begins to see their flaws and hypocrisies. She wonders why adults always lie, but comes to the confusion that they’re perpetually “confused” and have no more idea what’s going on than she does. She can’t rely on them for guidance, nor even for a strong foundation. The only grounded relationship she has is with “Auntie Japan,” one of her father’s girlfriends who genuinely cares for and tries to help her, but even this is eventually ruined by her father’s irresponsibility. 

Everyone seems strangely obsessed with Japan despite its recent economic downturn. Her grandmother’s neighbour has just returned from a trip there, while her grandmother likes to watch Japanese variety shows on television and wants to visit there, too, but at the same time was a child during the Japanese occupation and has ambivalent feelings towards the nation. Swee Swee’s mother is a Japanese-speaking tour guide who plans to take a tour group to the memorial for those who were killed during the war, but also buys Swee Swee large quantities of Japanese chewing gum that she illicitly sells at school for a little extra money. As a news item reveals, chewing gum has recently been banned for sale or importation in an effort to improve public hygiene and there are heavy penalties for bringing it into the country.

This rather draconian measure may serve to bear out the oppressiveness of Singaporean society and its obsession with rules, but also demonstrates Swee Swee’s cheeky resourcefulness. She and Tian raid the local rubbish bins, picking out things like crayons and toy cars for Tian that no one is providing for them now that they’ve been caught between their parents with no one taking full responsibility. Perhaps because of this, Swee Swee is keen to assert her own identity. She’s confused on her first day at school because the teacher tried to use an English name she didn’t know she had. She asks to be called “Swee Swee” instead, though most of her classmates use English names and some call her “Eileen” anyway. 

Swee Swee takes a liking a boy who tells him that he has two girls that he likes, but can’t choose between them. Given her circumstances, Swee Swee asks if one is for weekends and the other during the week, but the boy says his mother told him that in life you have to make a choice, you can’t have one thing and the other. This, of course, upsets her, because she knows she’ll have to choose one parent and agonises over the choice. Meanwhile, her father plans to have Tian adopted by a wealthy couple who are moving to Australia, despite her loyalty towards him. The boy tells Swee Swee he likes girls with long hair, which is one reason she resents it when her grandmother forces her to cut it, but eventually loses faith in him when she sees him fondling another girl’s plaits, abruptly ending their friendship. In the end, she has only herself to rely on. The 4:3 aspect ratio may evoke a sense of nostalgia, though Swee Swee may not have much to feel nostalgic about. Nevertheless, the film exudes a sense of warmth and a generosity of spirit to those around her who aren’t necessarily bad, just struggling in their own way, while despite her melancholy Swee Swee seems to have reached an understanding of herself and the world that eventually allows her to transcend her circumstances.

Ah Girl screened as part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Fight Against Evil 3 (东北警察故事3, Yang Bingjia, 2026)

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Top cop Li Hongqi (returns for another holiday gone wrong in the third instalment of the Fight Against Evil series, and there is indeed some serious evil to be thought. Directed this time by Yang Bingjia rather than Qin Pengfei, Fight Against Evil 3 (东北警察故事3, Dōngběi jǐngchá gùshi)received a theatrical release in Mainland China rather than premiering on IQYI’s streaming service and so benefits from slightly higher production values and features a mild tonal shift that sends the film into action comedy territory.

In fact the first “fight” takes place off-screen as Honqi casually takes down a man who’s taken his wife hostage so that he can finish a telephone call with the rather demanding mother-in-law (Diama Lin Xiaojie) he hasn’t actually me though he and his wife Touzi have already been married for two years. Having become estranged from her birthmother, Touzi tells him not to bother with her because she’s a handful, though Hongqi is keen to be a good son-in-law and hopes to broker a reconciliation by agreeing to his mother-in-law’s madcap plan to stage a second wedding in her hometown without actually telling Touzi until she gets there. 

In any case, Hongqi is immediately distracted when Xinxin (Ma Qianyi) , a cheerful teenage girl he met on the plane, is reported missing, suspected of having fallen victim to traffickers after failing to reach her grandfather’s house. Hongqi feels personally responsible because he said he’d take her, but had to leave after hearing that his mother-in-law had been arrested for causing trouble in a cafe. Nevertheless, the mother-in-law proves to be unusually well connected and helps him track down the local crime kingpin whom she apparently knew when he was a snivelling child getting beaten up for his lunch money. 

On his arrival in the town, Hong’s old friend Sun Biao (Cui Zhijia) tells him that times are different now and they have to do law enforcement in a more “civilised” way, which might suggest that things work differently here compared to the city, though as it turns out Hong’s skills are still in demand as he finds himself repeatedly getting into brawls with the local bad guys. Even Baio also gets into the swing of things wanting to prove that his fighting skills are still as good as Hongqi’s. This is, however, violence very much in the service as justice as everyone involved in the fights is already an active participant in the world of crime and the violence is being used to subdue rather than interrogate them.

Meanwhile, the trafficking gang seems to be an offshoot of some kind of cult that attracts people who’ve encountered financial ruin due to contemporary social issues from being scammed to failing in business or developing a gambling problem. Most of the lower-ranking members are doing this more out of desperation and have abandoned their humanity as a means of survival, not that it excuses what they’ve done. The leader, meanwhile, experienced a tragedy of her own which seems to have affected her mind and has made her especially attached to young Xinxin who otherwise proves plucky and resourceful with her repeated attempts to escape from the gang.

Despite the grimness of the subject matter, the film finds plenty of opportunities for comedy not least in the zany antics of Hongqi’s mother-in-law who also has a justice-loving heart and at one point takes off to catch the kidnappers herself on her moped. There’s a fundamental absurdity to Hong’s existence in which he’s been yet again drawn into a case while supposedly on holiday while attempting to keep his demanding mother-in-law happy and keeping the whole thing secret from wife in the hope he can either bamboozle her into taking part or she will arrive and talk her mother out of it. This sense of absurdity also carries over into some of the fight scenes in which Hongqi has to fight off an entire gang while his mother-in-law hides under a table in a pool hall or has to go undercover in a club, despite looking the most like a policeman it’s possible to look without actually wearing a uniform.

It is not, however, all slapstick and still features some seriously impressive action sequences. The film also makes some attempt to mine humour in the decidedly unfunny customary series of title cards explaining that the nation is taking measures to combat human trafficking and explaining that everyone was caught and punished in accordance of law before finishing on a note that explains China has over two million police officers, which is intended to be reassuring but perhaps is also the exact opposite. Nevertheless, the film is a great deal fun as Hongqi and his mother-in-law fight off bad guys while simultaneously planning a wedding.

Fight Against Evil 3 screens 23rd August as part of Big Bad Film Fest.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese subtitles only)

Match Monde (マッチモンド, Ryusuke Kurahashi, 2026)

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Scripted by Yugo Sakamoto, Ryusuke Kurahashi’s low-budget adaptation of the Shogo Horiuchi manga Match Monde seems to be aiming for a Baby Assassins vibe while placing a contemporary spin on the classic high school delinquents fighting manga. Unlike many similarly themed films, high school never actually features and most of the users of fighting app Match Monde appear to be long past high school age even if it’s supposed to be limited to those 18 and under. 

The title is a kind pun in that Match Monde operates in the same way as a dating app, though it allows members to find worthy opponents for fighting. Users can also monetise their pugilistic talents though taking the “bounty” from defeated opponents, or pick up tips through live streaming. It’s not really clear why Mikio (Kotaro Daigo) is on this app as he dislikes fighting and seems to be something of a coward. In the opening sequence, he waits outside pretending to play on his phone while his best friend Yuta is beaten up by a bullying gang of older kids that Mikio later hides in a bin to avoid. It’s while running away, however, that he bumps into Mahiro (Masayoshi Katsuki) who can’t really be bothered to fight anyone but gives Mikio some life advice to the fact that he should be fighting to protect something important rather than just to protect himself. 

Mahiro is a bit a stock character in these kinds of stories, walking around with a beatific smile permanently on his face and carrying a strangely vacant aura. Obviously, it turns out that he’s a top fighter and high school drop out who is willing to fight for Mikio after seeing him develop his resolve to stand up to the bullies rather than let his friend get beaten up on his own again. Like Baby Assassins, however, the film is perhaps a little bit more interested in the boys’ mundane lives than it is in the fighting. Mahiro ropes Mikio in to help out at a part-time job working in his childhood friend Suzuna’s cafe because he says he seems kind earnest, which is broadly true, while Mahiro struggles to knuckle down and work and fears letting his friend down in that way.

While it may have strongly homoerotic undertones, particularly in the relationship between sometime villain Mairu and his late “best friend” Kitano who was murdered after becoming a delinquent, the film’s humour is distinctly old school and in some ways spills over into sexism as the defeated bullies are seen acting in stereotypically feminine ways such as knitting scarves for each other. Meanwhile, Mahiro and Mikio aren’t really afraid of getting into fights with the delinquents, but are apparently terrified of being told off by Shizuna. 

The focus is indeed on traditional masculinity which is rooted in protecting those weaker than oneself, especially women, though here also avoiding becoming someone who deliberately picks on picks on easy targets to assert their dominance as Mikio had been doing. Perhaps the only reason he was on the app was to prove Yuta wrong when he called him a coward, though he quickly ends up being exploited by the bullies who force him to fight so they can take his winnings, as optimistic as that might be. As the so-called “Penniless King”, Mahiro comes to occupy the space of an underdog hero who isn’t even technically in the game, but ends up winning it anyway just by virtue of being a cool guy who’s good with his fists.

Speaking of which, the fight scenes are sometimes unpolished but generally well choreographed. There seems to be some attempt to set up a continuing series with repeated references to a friend who is no longer on the scene as well as an incongruous appearance by Danhi Kinoshita, the star of Takashi Miike’s Blazing Fists, seemingly in a background, non-speaking part as a random member of Mairu’s gang. The potential there is quite interesting given that the natural result of all these boys fighting is that they end up becoming friends, even as Mairu insists he wants to defeat all the delinquents in revenge for his friend’s death so he’ll be the only one left and they’ll cause no more harm. Who knew that what they were really fighting was loneliness? Maybe Match Monde is friendship app after all.

Match Monde screens 23rd August as part of Big Bad Film Fest.

Trailer (no subtitles)