Tag: Fantasia International Film Festival

God Skin (หมัดเทวา ท้าเดิมพัน, Paween Purijitpanya, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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In the closing moments of Paween Purijitpanya’s God Skin (หมัดเทวา ท้าเดิมพัน), protagonist Win (Sutthirak Subvijitra) remarks that the question isn’t if we can win the game, but if it was always rigged against us from the start. The house always wins, the film seems to say, though most people never even realise they were playing the game. Win comes to the realisation only too late, reflecting that he was suckered in by that first win that encouraged him to think that the system was fair when, in reality, it was anything but.

Set in the near future, Win is one of many regular office workers who’ve lost their jobs to AI. He now works as a food delivery driver, but struggles to meet his expenses while caring for his mother who has serious health issues. When he runs into old school friend It seemingly by chance, he’s introduced to an underground world of illicit prizefighting in which the wealthy and powerful bet on augmented matches in which they can award special items to fighters enhanced with all-powerful nanobots. Evicted from his apartment and with his mother hospitalised awaiting expensive medical treatment, Marwin decides it might be worth stepping into the ring despite his age and lack of familiarity with the game.

The fact is that in this world, Win’s physicality is almost irrelevant while his body is exploited as a tool for wealthy men to fight each other by proxy. Against the odds he manages to make it past the first round with the help of unlikely patron Guan Yu, an anime obsessive nicknamed “nerdass”, who takes a liking to him because of his bold, underdog spirit. Though he swore to do this only once to get the money for his mother’s operation, Win is emboldened by his unexpected success, and decides to continue playing despite knowing the potential health risks involved with upgrading his nanobots and exposing himself to physical punishment in the ring. 

In a way, this kernel of greed that exists within Win’s desire for success subtly undercuts the film’s sense of rebellion against the inherent unfairness of a capitalistic system especially once it becomes clear that some of what’s happening to him is a direct consequence of questionable choices he himself may have made. Then again, perhaps it’s fairer to say that he fell victim to an irresponsible product designed to prove addictive and exploit a sense of dissatisfaction with the system even if it seems his life may have been comfortable enough as it was without being tricked into always wanting more.

But in the world of underground prizefighting, he can convince himself he’s not fighting for himself but for others. After covering his mother’s medical expenses, he becomes determined to pay off the debts of his high school girlfriend Praewa who has apparently been sold to the bar as a hostess to satisfy her father’s debts. There are two female fighters, one a former hostess and the other a transwoman, who are also challenging this system in the ring though it seems fighting to protect his mother and girlfriend becomes a key factor in Win’s sense of himself as a masculine hero succeeding through physical dominance of other men in the gladiatorial ring. He is unwilling to fight women on an equal footing, and when he discovers that his opponent is only a teenager refuses to fight altogether while taking It to task over the game’s questionable ethics. 

Nevertheless, Win stays in this world because he still thinks he can win even as his body begins to betray him. It isn’t really about Praewa or his mother, he wanted to be a winner without realising that the only “winners” are the men upstairs and you can’t become one of those by playing the game honestly. It may have succeeded in becoming one, but only by accepting that being an elite means exploiting other people’s desperation to get them to fight for you while creaming most of the profits. That’s not even something that’s really occurred to Marwin, who is as the mad scientist nanobot tattooist says, not someone who’s naturally disposed to hurting other people which makes him a natural sucker for this game. Bleak and dystopian in the extreme, the conclusion seems to suggest that in the end, Win was a victim of his own deluded hopes who never realised the only way to win was not to play in the first place.

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

The Origin of Ultraman (Yu Nakamura & Kazuki Yoshida, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Ultraman is one of Japan’s most recognisable cultural phenomena. Loved by generations of children, the landmark special effects-heavy drama has proved incredibly influential. Despite its title, Yu Nakamura and Kazuki Yoshida’s documentary The Origin of Ultraman isn’t actually as much interested in the franchise’s history as it is in its reception, focusing on the recollections of filmmakers and creatives from Japan and beyond discussing what Ultraman meant to them.

In fact, the film is largely structured around a discussion between directors Hirokazu Koreeda and Guillermo Del Toro who find unexpected commonality in the reception of Ultraman in Japan and Mexico respectively. Nevertheless, one of the drawbacks of this approach is that it unwittingly adopts a US-centric sensibility in contrasting the lack of cultural impact the series has had in America with that in other areas of the world, while later somewhat contradicting itself in featuring discussions with the American directors of the Netflix-produced US animation Ultraman: Rising.

Though the insights provided by Del Toro in particular are often interesting, the film is at its best when focusing on those who actually worked on the series and were involved with its original run in the mid-1960s. One of the reasons for the franchise’s success seems to have been the determination of everyone involved to create something that felt real and authentic. No one was interested in writing the show off as disposable entertainment for children, but rather precisely because it was aimed largely at a younger audience, the creative team were universally focused on providing high-quality entertainment. 

Nevertheless, despite Eiji Tsuburaya’s admiration for the stop motion techniques he so admired in the Hollywood movie King Kong, the decision to use humans in suits was born of the realities of television production in Japan. Incredibly tights budgets and production schedules simply would not allow for a complex and time-consuming process such as stop motion. Instead, they used Tsubuyara’s iconic talent with miniatures to provide a sense of reality.

The film suggests that this sense of conviction in their work stems from the fact that, Eiji Tsuburaya aside, most of the creatives behind the creation of Ultraman were born in 1930s and had spent their childhoods against the backdrop of the war. They were interested in sending a more idealistic vision to the next generation of children that was about goodness and harmony. Nevertheless, despite their experiences and anti-war stance, they still had an admiration for the machinery of warfare and were attracted to the “coolness” of guns, tanks, and aeroplanes.

This contradiction is apparent in the Buddhist underpinnings of Ultraman’s design and the world that surrounds him. Ultraman then takes on a kind of divine presence representing “cosmos” in a constant battle with the “chaos” of the kaiju to maintain peace and balance in the universe. This duality is also reflected in his merging with the human Hayata and willingness to give up his own life to save him, eventually along with all mankind. Ultraman does not actually like fighting the kaiju and rarely kills them, while kaiju are not necessarily evil so much as just being what they are.

Del Toro suggests these themes as a reason why the show found an audience in Catholic Mexico it evidently didn’t in the predominantly Protestant United States. Monsters in American movies, he says, tend to be unnaturally oversized animals, in contrast to kaiju which often have more complex personalities and humanlike thought patterns. Which is to say they too have a quality of divinity or innocence. On discovering a kaiju graveyard, the decide to hold a Buddhist funeral for the fallen kaiju out of respect for their lives.

In other ways, however, the show was also a counter to the optimism represented by EXPO ’70 reflecting a degree of anxiety about scientific progress and the responsibilities that come with it. These dualities and contradictions seem to have struck a chord with post-war children who were drawn to the sense of safety and certainty Ultraman provided. Hideko Anno describes his encounter with the series as a kind of “curse”, realising that most of his work has just been in one way or another a reflection of Ultraman and that he is creatively unable to escape its influence. This may perhaps go someway to explaining the origin of Ultraman’s appeal as a force of unambiguous good in world that can, in other ways, seem random and chaotic.

The Origin of Ultraman screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Specials (スペシャルズ, Eiji Uchida, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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Times are hard for yakuza these days. Nevertheless, it seems there’s still a little of the old spirit left in Eiji Uchida’s light-hearted caper The Specials (スペシャルズ) as an underling’s desire to make his boss’ dreams of ruling the city come true sees him enter the world of competitive dance. It’s a compelling hook, but at the same time a slightly mystifying one seeing as it’s never really explained why the assassins would need to form a dance troupe to knock off their target as opposed to just purchasing a ticket for the competition. Nor does it it explain why they want to shoot him from the stage rather than discretely injecting him with something from behind to make it look like a heart attack. And all of that aside, couldn’t they just kill him during his granddaughter’s dance rather than actually having to perform as part as part of the show?

Granted, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but as the gang are repeatedly told it’s not all about skill, passion counts for something. The main problem is that elderly rival boss Honjo seems to have an endless supply of henchmen who kind of look like him and are prepared to die in his place. The only time they can be sure it’s the real Honjo is when he attends his adult granddaughter’s dance competitions, which is why Kumashiro hits on the improbable idea of hiring a trio of assassins he believes has dance experience and getting them to enter in return for a huge reward. 

It doesn’t all quite go to plan, mainly because two of the assassins he picks are dealing with dance-related childhood trauma. The main man, Daiya, has retired from the hitman game and is currently working as a helper at an orphanage. He only agrees because the landlord’s trying to evict them so he can build luxury apartments there instead and they need money to buy the building back. The ironic thing is that one of the little girls there, Asuka, dreams of becoming a dancer. After the gang is kicked out of every dance school in the area due to their gloominess and emotional volatility, Asuka ends up becoming their coach. While there is something endearingly funny about the idea of these ice-cold tough guys being bossed around by a 10-year-old girl, there’s also an ethical issue that no one’s really considered yet given they’ve been lying to her about their true nature as killers for hire. Asuka will obviously want to be there if they make the final, and they don’t want to let her down but nor do they want her to witness them firing bullets from the stage to murder an old man and possibly a few others on the way given that this isn’t the most precise assassination plan.

Nevertheless, dance proves a liberating experience for all and as time moves on, most of the guys have sort of forgotten about their mission and are focussed instead of competition-winning glory. Even Kumashiro’s ambitious boss remarks that he seems different these days, somehow happier having traded his stern yakuza expression for something more friendly, which might not altogether be a good thing for his working life. The various assassins, who were accustomed to working alone, have now warmed to the idea of being part of a team and to a certain extent at least, it’s no longer purely about the money or achieving any of their singular goals. 

Then again, it says something that the ones who suffer most are old-school yakuza like Kumashiro and his prison buddy Murasame (played by V-cinema yakuza movie star Hitoshi Ozawa) who can literally only dance to old tunes and unlike the youngsters find it difficult to adapt to this more modern world in which things like loyalty have become “old-fashioned,” in the words of sullen hitman Kiryu. Though the tonal shift of the film’s unexpected final sequence may undercut the feel good quality of what is essentially a zany post-yakuza comedy that as much as possible glosses over the bloody reality, it does at least allow the gang to fulfil their mission in a more satisfying way that suggests loyalty may not be such an outdated idea after all.

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

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Last Footage (Arkar Soe Oo, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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“Show some respect for things you don’t understand,” a creepy which intones, admonishing a group of city slickers fetching up in the forest with a dangerous disrespect for the natural world and what lies beyond in Arkar Soe Oo’s creepy found footage folk horror, The Last Footage. The first found footage films from Myanmar though apparently made for the international market rather than the purely domestic, the film is entirely shot with 4K camera-equipped glasses neatly juxtaposing an entirely new technology with ancient folk beliefs and ritual practices.

The opening sequence, however, seems to hint at the variety of uses these glasses can be put to from a young man taking a picture of his parents to another who surreptitiously Googles “how to talk to girls” while staring at an attractive woman in a coffee shop. A group of ghost hunters uses them to capture footage while walking around a former conference centre where large numbers of people died in an explosion before apparently meeting a sticky end after running into a weird cult. The ID numbers given suggest this footage is being stored somewhere else and is therefore somehow accessible externally.

Aung Khant seems to have bought the glasses just because they’re the cool new thing rather than a desire to capture something in particular. His friends describe him as being “obsessed with strange stuff” and recall a fairly disastrous trip they picked to a destination he picked, but don’t particularly seem to mind him documenting their every move through his glasses which, he points out, have excellent battery life. That comes in handy because the electricity’s been out at the strange little hut they eventually make it to after the coach they were travelling on breaks down right outside the forest.

Thu Ya has been left a sizeable amount of land on a former rubber plantation owned by his late grandfather. He plans to open a resort there, and suggests the group’s latest trip be to go check it out. In a way Thu Ya has received a toxic inheritance that he is ill-equipped to deal with, never really considering that his grandfather may have abandoned this place for a reason or that there really may be something dark and ancient lurking in the woods. They are all fairly affluent, educated urbanites who only joke about supernatural threats and are flippant about folk beliefs. Despite being urged not to do anything to disrupt the balance of the forest, two of the group engage in some black magic rituals as a joke using cow’s blood and candles they brought from home.

Stepping into the witch’s cottage, they may as well have entered another world as she makes cryptic pronouncements that “it has awakened” and there’s nothing to be done now except accept one’s fate. Obsessed with black magic rituals herself in an effort to resurrect her late son, the witch isn’t really interested in helping the gang or saving their lives. Beginning to realise they probably should have listened to Thu Ya’s uncle Ko Nyo who warned them that the forest was not a safe place, Aung Khant and his friends have little choice other than to do battle with the evil they’ve awakened in the hope of rescuing a missing child even if they themselves may not survive.

As the wearer of the glasses, Aung Khant is there to be an audience stand-in providing an immersive POV that gives the impression of actually being present. As such he is a fairly passive presence following those who take part in the action so he can witness and recored it through his glasses. In a sense, he embodies the camera and the fact that it is mounted in his glasses means that it can continue capturing images without his involvement. All he can really do, however, is watch as his friends desperately try to come up with solutions after deciding that they can’t run from this particular beast and will have to their best to fight it. As the witch had said, however, there are some things that cannot be understood but must be respected. They will pay a heavy price for their lack of respect for traditional folk practices and an ancient past from which they have become entirely disconnected. 

The Last Footage screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Break Free (オドレ！ヤクザ, Yu Nakamoto, 2026) [Fantasia 2026]

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The yakuza as an institution has long been on the decline in Japan, if not on the brink of extinction, thanks to the various anti-organised crime laws that have come into play over the last few decades. The laws are so stringent that members of the yakuza are unable to open bank accounts, rent property, or even take out a mobile phone contract, making their daily lives almost impossible. Meanwhile, dwindling manpower and changing times have meant that the yakuza cannot make a living from its traditional lines of business and has to look for other ways to earn its keep.

It’s this very problem that’s plaguing the heroes of Yu Nakamoto’s warmhearted comedy Break Free (オドレ！ヤクザ, Odore! Yakuza!) who are all doing various other unsatisfying jobs such as working as takeaway delivery drivers, shopping mall mascots, or running low level romance scams online which seems like a more innocent nod to the reality that the actual yakuza’s main new line of business is scamming the elderly and vulnerable. Then again, most of them are really a little young to have joined the yakuza in its heyday and the film really takes place within the context of more recent straight-to-video yakuza movies. Though it makes frequent nods to the darker side of yakuza life, often for comic effect such as the silhouette of Kunio’s (Akio Fujii) colleague Yama (Shigeo Osako) beating a guy with a baseball bat appearing behind him as he shoots a dance video, our heroes are mainly good guys and hapless fools whose problem is that they can’t let go of their old lives nor can they adapt to the modern society.

The inability to get a legitimate phone is perhaps one reason why 38-year-old Kunio is completely unaware of social media and apps like “TikTak” that are dominated by dance videos. Another thing that yakuza really can’t do any more is harm a member of the public, which is why one slimy guy in a suit thinks it’s a good idea to try and show off to his girlfriend by taunting a yakuza knowing he can’t do anything to him. But Kunio unexpectedly fights back through the medium of improvisational street dance and goes viral for his pains. The clan begin to spot a new, less problematic line of business, but the plan is once again complicated by the fact that yakuza are technically banned from having accounts on those kinds of services as well appearing on television. Kunio, while still a yakuza, has to cosplay as one by pretending that the yakuza thing is just a gimmick to give his dance videos more of an edge. 

Deciding to hone his skills, he ends up in a dance class surrounded by little kids and run by a woman who used to be a backup dancer, but decided she liked teaching more and opened a school. In a way, this echoes Kunio’s journey. Marie’s decision to quit being a backup dancer wasn’t a moment of defeat but its opposite as she actively chose the kind of life she thought would suit her better. Kunio’s friend has already left the yakuza because he wanted to get married but didn’t want his girlfriend to become a gangster’s wife. He is still subject to some of the restrictions placed on yakuza so his life isn’t easy, but he makes a good living with his yakiniku restaurant and is very happy in his marriage. 

The pun of the English-language title refers to Kunio’s efforts to “break free” of the moribund yakuza world through the power of break dancing which not only reconnects him with the unfulfilled desires of his late brother but offers him a path to discovering his true self as he realises that in dance he’s finally found something he actually wants to do. Thanks to an unexpectedly supportive new community around him from Marie at the dance school to a pint-sized aspiring idol and veteran influencer Ririko, Kunio begins to see new possibilities for the future, but the yakuza proves harder to escape than one might first expect. Whether he can ever really “break free” remains to be seen, but even while otherwise imprisoned, dance can be liberating. Trading heavily on the incongruities of its concept, the film is nevertheless warmhearted and sympathetic of its gangster heroes who find themselves cast adrift in a world that no longer has much place for them.

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

Trailer (no subtitles)

Fantasia International Film Festival Confirms Complete 2026 Programme

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The Fantasia International Film Festival returns for its 30th edition taking place once again in Montreal from July 16 to Aug. 2. As usual this year’s programme includes a host of new and classic features from East Asia:

China

Hong Kong

Indonesia

  • Levitating – Supernatural drama in which a young man dreams of becoming a shaman.
  • Sleep No More – Darky comic supernatural thriller from Edwin.

Japan

  • Screenshot
  • AnyMart – Bloody combini life satire starring Shota Sometani.
  • Beasts Clutching at Straws – Crime thriller directed by Hideo Jojo and adapted from the novel by Keisuke Sone previously adapted in Korea as Beasts Clawing at Straws.
  • Break Free – Zany comedy in which a yakuza’s tiktok dance goes viral.
  • Captured! – Quirky horror in which a young woman starts a horror blog only to find herself haunted for real.
  • Cherry and Virgin  – Animation exploring the relationship between a commercial illustrator and an erotic manga artist.
  • Cocoon – One Summer of Girlhood  – Animated adaptation of the manga by Machiko Kyo recounting the story of the Lily Corps during the Battle of Okinawa.
  • Gozu – Surreal gangster drama from Takashi Miike.
  • GROTESQQQUE – Three part anime anthology from Atsushi Nishigori. World Premiere.
  • The Mouths – Horror from Takashi Shimizu in which university friends investigate a haunted tree.
  • Nameless – A man who can kill with a seemingly invisible weapon goes on the rampage after being harangued by a religious woman in a cafe, leaving police and witnesses baffled in Hideo Jojo’s adaptation of the manga by actor and comedian Jiro Sato. Review.
  • Never After Dark – Horror from Dave Boyle following a spirit medium who guides wandering souls to the afterlife.
  • A New Dawn – Anime in which childhood friends reunite and two brothers face the closure of their family fireworks factory.
  • The Origin of Ultraman – Documentary exploring the origins of the classic tokusatsu series overseen by Hirokazu Koreeda.
  • Redline – Takeshi Koike’s classic 2009 racing-themed anime.
  • The Samurai and the Prisoner – Mystery period drama from Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
  • Sekiro: No Defeat – Anime set in the Sengoku era in which a ninja must rescue a kidnapped child.
  • The Specials – Comedy from Eiji Uchida in which yakuza must post as a dance troupe to assassinate a rival.
  • Suzuki=Bakudan – Cat and mouse game between a mass bomber and a brainy policeman. Review.
  • TOKYO BURST: Crime City – Japanese spin-off of Ma Dong-seok’s Roundup series directed by Eiji Uchida.
  • Village of Eight Gravestones – Adaptation of the classic novel by Seishi Yokomizo directed by Takashi Shimizu.
  • When You Open the Door – Horror starring Serena Motola as a young woman drawn to a woodland shrine.
  • Wind Breaker – High school fighting drama from Kentaro Hagiwara.
  • You Are the Film – Directorial debut from screenwriter Makoto Ueda in which a screenwriter and musician somehow end up watching each other’s experience on the big screen.

Philippines

  • Hayop Ka! – Steamy grown-up animation following the romantic adventures of a shopworker.
  • Zsazsa Zaturnnah – LGBTQ+ themed superhero animation.

South Korea

  • Colony – Latest from Yeon Sang-ho in which a professor is trapped in a building with a mysterious virus.
  • The Eyes – Korean take on Julia’s Eyes.
  • The Journey to Gyeong-Ju – A mother sets out to get revenge against the man who killed her youngest child.
  • The Mutation – A man discriminated against because of his skin colour and a gay woman whose partner took her own life after being forced into a heterosexual marriage embark on a road trip.
  • Niko – A broke screenwriter suddenly disappears in Seoul.
  • The Seoul Guardians – Documentary focusing on Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law.
  • Tristes Tropiques – Children trained to be assassins turn against each other in this action thriller from Park Hoon-jung.

Taiwan

Thailand

  • God Skin – A desperate young man agrees to fight in a tournament in which rich people can send booster shots to their favourite players through VR tattooes.

Vietnam

The Fantasia International Film Festival runs in Montreal, Canada, July 16 to Aug 2. Full details for all the films along with scheduling and ticketing information are available via the official website, and you can also keep up with all the latest news via the festival’s Facebook page, Bluesky, Instagram, and Vimeo channels.

ChaO (Yasuhiro Aoki, 2025) [Fantasia 2025]

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Given the chance to achieve his dreams, a young man can hardly say no when he’s pressured into marrying the daughter of the king of the Mermen, but soon finds himself increasingly conflicted in Yasuhiro Aoki’s gorgeously animated fable, ChaO. Set in Shanghai, the film’s timely themes embrace an environmental imperative along with critiquing the capitalistic drive that is slowly devouring our world in its all-encompassing lust for profit.

But as Stephan’s father was keen to tell him, we live in harmony with nature and not everything is ours to take. You should leave it at the bare necessities and never take more than you need, which is ironically Chao’s approach to life while living with Stephan. She soon sells off her vast royal treasures and declares herself happy enough just with Stephan himself and life of simple pleasures. But Stephan does seem to want more, or more to the point, he can’t see anything past the achievement of his dreams in keeping a promise to his father to invent a new air jet boat that would be safer and kinder to wildlife.

His evil boss Mr Sea, however, points out that no one’s going to want to pay more just to be kind to sea creatures so seeing as his air jets won’t save them any money, the project’s a non-starter. He only gets a shot at it because of ChaO and the light she casts on the company who are now very keen to look good, especially as they’re currently negotiating with Merman king Neptunus about compensation for the sea creatures injured by propellers on their boats. It’s clear that this bothers Stephan, especially as he overhears a pair of co-workers making fun of him in the bathroom. They think he’s an idiot too and that he’s only being indulged because he’s ChaO’s husband and agreed to humiliate himself by marrying a fish.

Stephan too refers to Chao at times as a “fish”, hinting at xenophobic notions within the contemporary society. He sees her as “ugly” and alien, but is also captivated by her human form which is to say, he can only appreciate her when she assimilates fully and becomes properly human. For Chao’s part, she does her best to be what she sees as the ideal wife to Stephan by human standards but struggles to adjust to life on land. Stephan clearly expects her to fulfil a feminine role by cooking and cleaning for him, but only belatedly notices that she’s injured her fins in an attempt to cook food he might find more palatable.

His obsession with his quest prevents Stephan from ever really seeing Chao for who she is or noticing how difficult it’s been for her to adjust to life in a new culture while he’s given her very little in the way of support. But it’s precisely through her that Stephan begins to unlock the buried secrets of his childhood and reacquaint himself with the boy he once was. What he really wanted was to be a bridge between humanity and sea creatures, which is something he can do in a different way if he weren’t so hung up on air jets which themselves also have their own dangers. 

Nevertheless, it’s telling that Stephan eventually chose to make his life on the sea, simultaneously accepting a liminal place and implying it is not yet possible to live on land. He’s approached in the framing sequence by a hapless journalist, Juno, who was fascinated by their story as a child and keen to know whether the improbable fairytale is actually true in part because he’s facing a similar dilemma and can’t work up the courage to tell the person he loves how he really feels. What he learns is that he should tell them as soon he can while he still can so he’ll have no regrets for the future. Aoki’s backgrounds teem with detail, each packed out with whimsey that alternately paints Shanghai as kind of charming pirate village and captures a sense of the real city in rainy water colours hinting at its lonely streets. The message is clear that coexistence is never guaranteed and requires more of a respect for nature and the natural world along with the thoughts and feelings of others if we are truly to live in peace and happiness.

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

Trailer (no subtitles)

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo (山忌 黃衣小飛俠, Tsai Chia-Ying, (2025) [Fantasia 2025]

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There are some things you aren’t meant to see. Or at least, should you come across them, you should think better of it and be quietly on your way minding your own business. But unfortunately, curiosity got the better of the three hikers at the centre of Tsai Chia-Ying’s timeloop horror, Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo (山忌 黃衣小飛俠, shān jì huáng yì xiǎo fēi xiá) and now one of them’s trapped, forever living the same day over again and forced to watch his fiancée die in increasingly bizarre ways knowing he is unable to save her. 

To that extent, Tsai uses the time loop as a metaphor for grief in which the guilt-ridden Chia-ming (Jasper Liu) is psychologically unable to escape the mountain on which his friend, An-wei (Tsao Yu-ning), died. Five years later, he’s in a relationship with An-wei’s old girlfriend Yu-hsin (Angela Yuen)who was also on the mountain that day, but he can’t help feeling haunted by the spectre of An-wei and convinced that Yu-hsin would never have chosen him if An-wei were still alive. He worries that perhaps he didn’t try hard enough to save him knowing that he’d never have a shot at Yu-hsin with An-wei in the picture. He promised he’d get An-wei of the mountain, but in the end he left him there and in a way he’s still there too. 

This trip to the mountains seems to have been for closure. They’re still looking for An-wei’s body, but Chia-ming has a ring in his pocket and a question he’s too afraid to ask. He’s asked Yu-hsin to marry him before and she said no. He thinks it’s because she’s still hung up on An-wei, but in reality he’s the one who can’t let go and his insecurity is killing his current relationship. Repeatedly watching Yu-hsin die is a manifestation of his anxiety that she’ll never really be his, that he can’t keep or protect her, and that the only reason they’re together is because he betrayed An-wei. Yet the looping is also an expression of the way that his grief roots him in time. He literally can’t move forward and is forced to remember every day that his friend is gone. During his journey he eventually meets an older woman in a smilier position who says that she too finds each day repeating as she struggles to process the loss not only of her son who also went missing on the mountain, but of her husband, who was swallowed by his grief and ended up abandoning her in the same way that Chia-ming is unwittingly abandoning Yu-hsin.

But there are also ancient and arcane forces at work. All of this seems to have happened because An-wei broke a taboo and opened the door to the vengeful spirits of those who were killed by nature and claimed by the mountain. The mountain then becomes a place of death into which people disappear and leave those who love them lonely on the other side. The woman’s husband also felt that souls had become trapped here and wanted to free them while searching for his missing son, but as Chia-ming later discovers, though it may be possible to change the reality, it will come at a great cost and at least one sort of loss will have be to accepted before the mountain will release its grip.

Chia-ming makes his decision, but the outcome does rather have the effect of making his present life seem like a dream or thought experiment in which he imagined a future for himself in which his friend was no longer a romantic obstacle and then felt bad about it. He doesn’t really give Yu-hsin much of a say and makes (almost) all her decisions for her, never really knowing if one day she might have tired of An-wei and chosen him instead or if he could have resigned himself to loving her from afar. In the end, the only way he can free himself from this loop is to face the past with emotional honesty and reckon with his feelings along with his guilt and jealousy. The question is how much he really wants to leave the mountain or whether his obsession will eventually trap him there as just another “missing person” swallowed by grief and led astray by despair. 

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles )

Good Game (觸電, Dickson Leung Kwok-Fai, 2025) [Fantasia 2025]

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Maybe esports don’t sound that intense, but it turns out that they require a good deal of physical training and stamina. Which is to say that like many other athletic pursuits, there’s an invisible age cap in which players are often written off at a comparatively youthful age because their reaction times might be slower or they might struggle to pick up on new strategies or ways of playing the game. But that’s only part of Solo’s problem. He’s never exactly been a team player, but esports is all he’s ever known and he’s fiercely resentful of being edged out by a bunch of 20 year olds.

Dickson Leung Kwok-Fai’s Good Game (觸電) is really in part about how one is never really “too old” to make a go of something. But also about growing up, which doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning your dreams, but perhaps becoming a little more aware of the reality along with gaining self-awareness about the self-sabotaging effects of your behaviour. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is changing too, but is clinging on to the past really the best thing you can do?

Nowhere more is this change being felt than in Tai’s internet cafe. As is pointed out to him, kids play games on their phones these days, so establishments like his no longer have as much to offer. His bright idea is entering an esports tournament, not only for the prize money but to advertise the cafe and bring the customers back. But the problem is that his best customers are an elderly couple who’ve ironically started coming to the cafe for stimulation because the games help stave off Auntie Lan’s dementia, while her husband, Golden Arm, turns out to be actually quite good at them. 

To win, he wants to recruit Solo, a formerly successful esports player. His team has just been disbanded after losing a championship, but Solo doesn’t want to give up yet. He refuses to believe that his esports career is over just because he’s nearly 30, but also doesn’t want to lower himself to playing with the oldies on the Happy Hour team even though no one else he called wanted to join in because they all moved on from esports ages ago or just don’t want to deal with his drama. As his name suggests, Solo is somewhat egotistical and hasn’t figured out the reason his team kept losing was because of a lack of teamwork and trust. 

As his friend points out to him, Solo can only devote himself to esports because his parents are still supporting him financially, whereas he had to do two part-time jobs just to make ends meet because the economy’s rubbish and unemployment is sky high. Esports is not viable nor long-term career choice, but it is a lifeline for people like Tai, Golden Arm, and Auntie Lan who can find purpose and community in gaming that allows them to carry on fighting even when their problems seem insurmountable. 

With an inevitable rent hike looming, Tai is urged to look for smaller premises but stubbornly tries to hang on. Yet like many recent Hong Kong films, Good Game seems to say that it’s alright to let go of a fading Hong Kong or at least to try to grab on to the parts that matter most and take with you what you can carry while embracing the community around you. Tai’s daughter Fay’s inability to stick at her jobs hints at this sense of restlessness, but also a changing dynamic in the younger generation that won’t be satisfied with a dull but steady job that pays the bills but nothing more. Though Solo’s former teammate gets a regular job selling insurance to try to gain some kind of financial stability, he still returns to coach the team and is then offered another job doing the same. Winning or losing don’t really matter as much as playing a “good game”, which means learning to work as a team and make the most of everyone’s unique skills while trusting them to do their best and have your back. Leaning in to video aesthetics in interesting ways, the film creates a sense of immersion in its virtual world but equally a sense of warmth and solidarity in the real one as the rag tag team band together to fight for their right to continue fighting. 

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

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original trailer (no subtitles)