How to Divorce During the War highlights how families can be torn apart, sometimes because of politics (Film review)

Display of posters of films, including that for How to Divorce 

During the War, screened at the 50th Hong Kong

International Film Festival 

 

  

Lithuanian filmmaker Andrius Blaževičius at the Q&A

session after a Hong Kong International Film Festival 

screening of his film 

 

How to Divorce During the War (Lithuania-Luxembourg-Ireland, 2025)

- Andrius Blaževičius, director-scriptwriter

- Starring: Marius Repšys, Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė, Amelija Adomaitytė

- Part of the HKIFF's Young Cinema Competition (World) program 

 

I don't know if others feel the same way about this but How to Divorce During the War strikes me as a title for an absurdist comedy rather than, say, an utterly serious drama.  As it turned out though, there is very little to laugh about in this work, set in 2022 Lithuania, about a nuclear family whose world is turned upside down by the parents splitting around the time that the Russians attacked Ukraine.

 

Vitas (played by Marius Repšys) is a filmmaker who spends more time daily cleaning the family home and being the main caregiver for pre-teen daughter Dovile (essayed by Amelija Adomaityte) than on the latest script that he's working on but has writer's block over.  In the eyes of his high-flying media exec spouse, Marija (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė), he is a shadow of the interesting, intelligent man that she married -- and so she wants out.  (She's also in a lesbian relationship with a colleague who seems to have egged her to divorce her husband.)

 

Since their house was in Marija's name, she had the legal right to ask Vitas to move out of it.  Which he reluctantly did.  Their daughter Dovile stays with Marija while Vitas moves back in with his parents, who he finds increasingly hard to get along with; especially after he finds -- via their doing such as spouting pro-Russian propaganda about the Ukraine war -- that they do not share his political views, which are more aligned with that of his now-ex-wife along with their daughter.

 

Consequently, Vitas finds himself part of not just one but two families at war with themselves at a low point in his professional life.  And, truly, it's hard not to feel for him.  And, also, Doville.  Who doesn't say much but watches, observes and knows far more -- about the family situation and also what's going on in the world at large -- than her parents and other adults may realise.  

 

On the other hand, Marija is not always as easy to have sympathy for; and is someone whose actions I sometimes could understand but I disagreed with at others.  The most complex character in the movie, it is through her that one is shown the domestic and internal conflicts that can arise from a woman becoming the main provider of the family -- something that still is the exception rather than the rule.  Also the conflict that a working person has with regards to how much one should -- or, maybe the better word is can -- professionally and financially sacrifice for one's ideological beliefs.  

 

My sense is that many Hongkongers who viewed this film will most relate to Vitas: particularly, his experiences with his parents.  Because of what happened here in 2019 and after China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong (in 2020), and how what happened were covered and portrayed by media on different sides of the political equation, conflicts (have) ensued between many parents and their (adult) offspring; and resulted in the breaking up of families -- or, at the very least, an increasing number of (adult) offspring deciding to move out of family abodes to live on their own.    

 

Part of me wanted to ask How to Divorce During the War's director-scriptwriter, Andrius Blaževičius, whether he was aware of Hong Kong's situation during the Q&A that was held after the screening I attended of his film.  Also, whether he knew that many Hongkongers feel a kinship with Ukrainians (and why).  But while I didn't, I do get the sense that he wasn't entirely clueless about why this sensitive dramatic offering is one that can resonate with people here even though they live thousands of kilometers away from Lithuania and Ukraine.

 

My rating for this film: 7.0 

Two Prosecutors tells a tale that's sadly predictable but chilling all the same (Film review)

 

Poster for the ninth film I viewed at the 

50th Hong Kong International Film Festival 

 

Two Prosecutors (France-Germany-Netherlands-Latvia-Romania-Lithuania-Ukraine, 2025) 

- Sergei Loznitsa, director and co-scriptwriter (with Georgy Demidov)

- Starring: Alexander Kutznetsov, Aleksandr Filippenko, Anatoliy Beliy 

- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program 

 

For much of Two Prosecutors, one only sees a single prosecutor on screen: Kornev (portrayed by Alexander Kutznetsove, whose nose looks like that of someone who emerged much the worse from a brutal boxing match or game of rugby!), a young government prosecutor only three months into his career.  Naive and idealistic, after coming into possession of a letter written in blood by a political prisoner, he decides to go see and hear the man: a former local party stalwart who had visited and given a speech about truth and Bolshevism at Kornev's law school.

 

Despite the prison head trying to dissuade him from doing so in multiple ways, Kornev stubbornly persists in meeting with a man considered so dangerous that he's been put in solitary confinement far away from other prisoners and watched over by multiple guards.  This despite  Stepniak (essayed by Aleksandr Filippenko) being elderly and physically weak, and, in fact being pretty close to death's door. 

 

It's pretty obvious that Stepniak has been physically tortured, and so badly that his internal organs are badly messed up.  It's less certain why the old Bolshevik ended up being among the victims of what looked to have been a power struggle that saw the NKVD (secret police; precursor of the KGB) infiltrate and take control of the Communist Party apparatus in their city of Bryansk. In any case, Stepniak adamantly maintained that if only his tale was told to Joseph Stalin, he would be freed and wrongs righted.  And asks Kornev to do just that.  Or, at the very least, appeal to someone in the central government over in Moscow to come clean up the locally centered mess.

 

Kornev, an upright, card-carrying member of the Communist Party, agrees to do so.  And journeys to Moscow to report all this to the man who's effectively his top boss: the Procurator General, Andrey Vyshinsky (Anatoli Beliy plays the film's second titular prosecutor, and real life historical figure).  But when they meet... well, let's just say that this scene is as chilling, if more so, than the moments when Stepniak shows Kornev the torture marks on his body as well as arms and legs.

 

Those who know that 1937, the year that Two Prosecutors is set, was the height of what's known as Stalin's Great Terror (or Purge) will have known early on where this film adaptation of a novella by Georgy Demidov, a Soviet physicist-writer-political prisoner was heading.  But it's the journey, rather than the destination, that really matters with regards to this tale. And director Loznitsa masterfully keep's one attention and stokes one's mounting horror regarding how things will end for the honorable Kornev for this gripping work's entire running time.   

 

By the way, that director Loznitsa was unable to make this film in his native Ukraine or Russia tells you speaks volumes about the current state of those parts of the former Soviet Union.  Equally clear is how Two Prosecutors is a strong indictment of the kind of regime that punishes righteous and idealistic folks who seek to do good unto one's fellow citizens. 

 

My rating for this film: 7.5  

The 2025 Hong Kong International Film Festival has begun, along with my personal HKIFF-ing! (Film reviews)

  

At the Hong Kong premiere of one of the 2025 Hong Kong 

International Film Festival's Opening Films

 

Pavane for an Infant's lead actress Fish Liew and director 

Chong Keat Aun on stage before the screening
 

Pavane for an Infant (Malaysia-Hong Kong, 2024)

- Chong Keat Aun, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Fish Liew, Natalie Hsu, Tan Mei Ling, Pearlly Chua, Ben Yuen 

- Part of the HKIFF's Gala Presentations program 

 

At the Hong Kong International Film Festival last year, Chong Keat Aun's Snow in Midsummer was named the winner of the Firebird award best film for young cinema competition (Chinese-language).  When speaking to a couple of Hong Kong filmmakers after one of its HKIFF screenings, I got the distinct sense that they were impressed by the Malaysian drama about one of the country's taboo subjects, the "race riots" that occured on May 13th, 1969.  

 

The impression that the Malaysian director's become quite the darling among Hong Kong film folk increased this year with the selection of his Pavane for an Infant as one of the Opening Films of this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.  And with Chong Keat Aun's third film having a number of Hongkongers among its cast and crew (including actress Natalie Hsu and cinematographer Leung Ming-kai).    

 

Despite her making her name in Hong Kong cinema, lead actress Fish Liew actually hails from Malaysia.  But because she had to be in Hong Kong for so many years already, she reportedly struggled initially to get back to speaking Cantonese like a native Malaysian Cantonese speaker rather than a Hong Kong one!  And it's very much to her credit that she not only does this in Pavane for an Infant but, also, speaks too in Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mandarin; something that her character, a worker at a baby hatch who interacts with Malaysians of other ethnicities as well as her own does.

 

Lai Sum (portrayed by Fish Liew)'s colleagues include Malay women and her boss is a ethnic Chinese woman (essayed by Tan Mei Ling) who's a practicing Muslim.  Among the women seen using the baby hatch are an ethnic Indian Hindu woman as well as ethnic Chinese ones; and among the adoptees of the abandoned babies are a Malay Muslim family.  Chong Keat Aun's film further showcases Malaysia's multi-ethnic, -cultural and -religious society and beliefs by including such as a Minangkabau ceremony celebrating a new female addition to the matrilineal society, and a Taoist medium (played by Hong Kong actor Ben Yuen).

 

At one level, the female friendships and various other demonstrations of female solidarity that course through Pavane for an Infant paint a positive picture of Malaysian society.  On the other hand, the fact that there are so many abandoned babies that the existence of baby hatches have become institutionalised, even if still opposed by certain strands of society, is, of course, less so.  And most definitely when many of the abandoned babies -- and abortions spoken about in the film (which actually are illegal in Malaysia) -- come as a result of rape and such.

 

As such, this is another one of Chong Keat Aun's films that I get the feeling will only be allowed to be screened in his native Malaysia after a number of cuts are made by the censors.  Which is a pity as he actually addresses important, relevant social and cultural issues in sensitive and thought-provoking ways; even though, I must admit, I could do without the "magical realistic" stylistic touches -- along with leisured pace -- that he does seem to be fond of too! 

 

My rating for this film: 7.5 

The Invasion (The Netherlands-France-U.S.A., 2024)

-  Sergei Loznitsa, director and scriptwriter

- Part of the HKIFF's Auteurs program

 

Despite Ukraine not being listed among countries that co-produced this documentary film, it's the country that's the focus of it.  Ukranian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa's also was shot entirely in the Eastern European country that has Russia invaded in February 2022 and is still very much a nation at war at the time of writing.

 

Unlike, say, Eastern Front, which I viewed at the 2023 Hong Kong International Film Festival, The Invasion doesn't have footage of battle.  But the war and enemy, and its effect on Ukranians, is very much apparent in this documentary which begins with an extended take of the funeral of a number of fallen soldiers that includes footage of their being mourned in a cathedral and, also, at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kyiv's Independence Square.

 

Over the course of the 145 documentary, a number of other funerals are also shown -- and, also, in long takes.  Sergei Loznitsa is obviously determined to show the sacrifices that Ukrainians have made for their country; ones that include the deaths of those who were the beloved spouses, parents, children of others, and respected and valued members of communities.  

 

At the same time, the Ukranians in The Invasion also are shown to be people who are determined to carry on with life even while living with death and destruction, the sound of war not far away and air raid warnings.  People -- soldiers but also civilians of different ages, ranging from elderly folk to young children -- also are seen observing happier ceremonies and times.

 

A cynic might say that The Invasion is a propaganda work, as it shows Ukranians to be enduring, and able to embrace life at a time when they and their country's survival are being threatened.  At the same time though, the price being paid is shown to be terribly high. And the fact that Ukraine has prevailed, is prevailing, more than three years on after Russia attacked and been attacking it, is something very much worth recording and witnessing.

 

My rating for this film: 7.5 

Just two days into 2024 and I already worry that it won't be a happy new year!

I like the color of these flowers I spotted on a hike

yesterday (New Year's Day, 2024)

 

It's just the second day of the new year and I don't want to be a kill joy but I worry that 2024 may be worse than 2023.  Some portends that are not good: the killing of Palestinian civilians continuing on New Year's Day; ditto the war in Ukraine caused by Russia's invasion in February 2022; ditto the civil war in Myanmar which massively escalated in May 2021; etc. And to add to it, there being a massive earthquake in the Noto Peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan yesterday -- though, thankfully, all tsunami warnings issued in association with it have now been lifted.

 

And then there's Hong Kong where, as per an RTHK report: "Safeguarding national security will continue to be Hong Kong's top priority, Chief Secretary Eric Chan said on Monday [i.e., New Year's Day], as he vowed to complete work for Basic Law Article 23 security legislation within this year."

 

A reminder: China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong on June 30th, 2020, which remains very much in effect and has sowed so much fear along with actual political persecution in the city. Basic Law Article 23 would effectively be Hong Kong's domestic version of a national security law -- one which has been opposed for decades by Hongkongers. Indeed, back on July 1st, 2003, over 500,000 people took part in a protest march against it -- and in the aftermath, the then Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chi-wah, felt obliged to resign, as did the then Security Chief, one Regina Ip.

 

Back to yesterday's RTHK piece: "On social media, Chan said the upcoming legislation, together with the existing national security law, will more effectively prevent, stop and punish acts endangering national security." So... Chan thinks Hong Kong is still not... secure?! (In other words: Hong Kong is still not back (to normal)? Re that last bit: if so, he and I are in agreement; albeit for different reasons!) 

 

Another bit from that piece: "Meanwhile, the number of visitors to Hong Kong topped 30 million in the first 11 months of last year, Chan said, adding that the government will continue to hold different international events and drive the local economy." 

 

While at first glance, that sounds impressive, do bear in mind though that that's still just around half of the number of visitors attracted to Hong Kong in 2018; and that the vast majority of Hong Kong's visitors, then but especially now, are from Mainland China rather than the rest of the world. So I really am not so sure how valid Hong Kong's description of itself as "Asia's World City" is anymore.

 

One more quote from the RTHK piece: "He also called on new district councillors to respond to people's urgent needs and concerns." Note: That would the new district councillors who gained seats in the District Council "election" last month which only 27.5% of registered voters decided to take part in -- as opposed to 71.2% for the 2019 District Council election -- for whatever reason (e.g., they couldn't be bothered to take part in something they considered a sham, couldn't find any candidate they actually believed would help them/Hong Kong, etc.)

 

So... happy new year? I would love for it to be so. But I already worry. And I think I have good reason to.  Still, if I were to look for a good portend: yesterday saw Hong Kong beat China 2-1 in a football match; the first time Hong Kong's footballers recorded a victory over China's in 29 years (or is it 38? -- in any case, it's a pretty historic victory!)  And granted that China had two players sent off (and an assistant coach) over the course of the game -- so were handicapped by having two players fewer than Hong Kong for part of the game.  But in some ways, that makes the whole thing even more hilarious (and yes, it's indeed good to have something to laugh about -- and so early into 2024 too)! :)

Visits to the 2023 Hong Kong Book Fair, and an alternative, "yellow" book fair (Photo-essay)

Earlier this week, I went to the 2023 Hong Kong Book Fair.  Having been to the book fair for a number of years now, certain trends are quite noticeable.  In addition to the obvious one of there being fewer and fewer "yellow" booths and books that are explicitly political on sale (even between 2016 and 2017, never mind after China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong), there also are way fewer English language books on sale -- and, actually, fewer exhibitor space for booksellers.  Also, maybe it's just me but there seems to be a lot more stalls hawking religious (more specifically, that which are Buddhist or Christian) books this year than any other year that I've been to the Hong Kong Book Fair!

 

On a brighter note: certain tomes that I was glad to see available for sale at the book fair last year remain available for sale this year.  Also, The Standard has reported that "a few small publishers [were] selling "politically sensitive" books that can no longer be found in public libraries, including books written by Au Ka-lun, a former columnist for the shuttered Stand News".  And while an alternative book fair for "yellow" book publishers and sellers was not able to take place last year, this year one organized by Hunter Bookstore's Leticia Wong did go ahead over in Sham Shui Po -- and when I went to check it out, I found that at least one bookseller that was among the smaller book fair's participants and also had a booth at the larger Hong Kong Book Fair! :)

 

Books I bought at book fairs I went to in recent days: 

Want to/can you guess which one(s) I got from the alternative 

book fair (as opposed to the Hong Kong Book Fair)? ;b

 

Yes, books by Xi Jinping and his ilk were on prominent display/for sale 

at the 2023 Hong Kong Book Fair -- but note that the booth attracted 

very few interested customers despite having a prominent location!

 

For comparison: note the crowd at a more "regular" booth 

(whose offerings included works by Nietzsche!) at the book fair!

 

Unlike last year, I didn't spot the copaganda booth this year

-- but I did see this for the first time at the Hong Kong Book Fair!

 

Also at the fair: a fair amount of Taiwanese representation

 

Two books that I found for sale at more than one booth:

George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984

 

Another book whose sale (or non-sale) I reckon is a good

weathervane for book fair censorship is this tome by 

Vaclac Havel, and, also, Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny

 

Probably the most popular national leader/politician this year -- 

books about Volodymyr Zelenskyy abounded, in both English

and Chinese (along with ones on Queen Elizabeth II)!

More horror and stress-inducing happenings in Hong Kong post June 4th

  

Good questions to ask about many things happening

in Hong Kong in recent days/months/years

 

With June 4th having come and gone (at least for this year) on Sunday, I was hoping that this week would be less fraught with disturbances.  But yesterday and today have brought word of further shocking events in Hong Kong (never mind other parts of the world, notably Ukraine).  

 

Yesterday saw the arrest of a mother for the murder of her three daughters (aged five, four and two years of age).  These killings by themselves are horrifying.  But the fact that they came just two days after the murder of two women has really shocked a city that -- fear-mongering anti-terrorism campaigns notwithstanding -- really does not see itself as crime capital.  

Something that both killers have in common is that they both had mental issues.  The 39-year-old man who fatally stabbed the two women in Diamond Hill on Saturday had a history of mental illness while the woman who suffocated her three children at their subdivided flat in Sham Shui Po "seemed to be suffering from a mental illness. She was said to have been babbling and talking about ghosts."  

 

This has led many folks here in Hong Kong to reach the following conclusion: "We don't have a sedition problem. We have a mental health crisis." And as another Hong Konger was moved to Tweet: "Hong Kong is a massive simmering bowl of unresolved tension and trauma, built up over the past 4 years. Continuing to push it under the surface won't make it go away..."

 

But instead of trying to solve or even ease Hong Kong's mental health crisis, the government looks to pile on the stress and distress.  Exhibit A today: the continued gaslighting of the public by officials, including Chief Executive John Lee -- to the point that The Economist's Don Weinland was moved to Tweet that: "It seems insane that ppl are constantly asking very direct questions about what is legal and what is not, only to be told in the vaguest possible terms that the law is clear and they must act in accordance with it".  

 

As for Exhibit B: how about the announcement by the Hong Kong government today that "it is seeking a court order to prohibit people from broadcasting or distributing the protest song “Glory to Hong Kong” after it was mistakenly played as the city’s anthem at several international sporting events in the past year"?  Lawyer Kevin Yam has explained in legal terms why the Department of Justice would seek to do this.  As a layperson, all I can think of is this all seems to be pretty over the top and only adds to people's fears that Hong Kong is getting further and further away -- rather than closer -- to being a "normal", sane city.

 

For one thing, as Ming Pao's Alvin Lum pointed out: "Not only is [the Hong Kong government] seeking to ban the distribution of the song/lyrics/melody in any way..., it’s also seeking to impose duty on those knowingly allow others to distribute/reproduce the song with alleged illegal intent, which may affect internet platforms." And, oh, "the proposed injunction by [the Department of Justice] also seek[s] to ban 32 various renditions of Glory to Hong Kong on YouTube (in Eng[lish], Japanese, Dutch, Xiqu, orchestra, etc) and “any adaptation of the song, melody, and/or lyrics”"!

 

As Channel News Asia's Chonqing-born reporter Wei Du was moved to state upon reading what Alvin Lum had Tweeted, "This is terrifyingly reminiscent of the episode that led Google to leave mainland China. Pushed enough, tech platforms might start to ask if it’s still worth it, and [Hong Kong] is a puny market, China was big." And this is indeed my fear --  more so than the authorities being successful in getting Hongkongers to stop remembering and singing "Glory to Hong Kong", never mind whistling, humming, etc. its tune.  That is, that this move by the Department of Justice will result in the Great Firewall of China coming to enclose Hong Kong. :(

Amnesty International hands the Hong Kong government a publicity victory even while other events taking place don't place in it a great light

  

Inside an airport that Ugyhur folks would do well to steer clear of

 

Back in October 2021, Amnesty International announced that it would leave Hong Kong, where it had hitherto had its Asia-Pacific headquarters, citing concerns about the national security law that China had imposed on the city in June 2020.  One wonders how much of a negative effect this move has had on the human rights organisation's investigative abilities; this particularly after Amnesty International walked back its allegations that Ughyur scholar Abuduwaili Abudureheman had been "disappeared" in Hong Kong.

 

In a statement issued earlier today, the international NGO revealed that "Abuduwaili Abudureheman spoke with Amnesty International and told us he did not travel to Hong Kong, contrary to previous information received".  Amnesty International also stated that: "We are pleased that Abuduwaili Abudureheman is accounted for. We will continue to strive to offer support to people who reach out to us when they believe they or their loved ones are at risk of human rights violations." 

 

As Hong Kong Free Press chief editor Tom Grundy Tweeted though: Amnesty International "admits they got it wrong but no apology to we media, nor the local [government]. Could be ruinous for their reputation, [and] it's unhelpful for the press who are under major scrunity. Let alone the 1000s of Uyghurs who've been actually detained & are uncontactable by loved ones."  

 

It's worth noting that the NGO's international reputation already has taken a major knock in the past year with the stance they've taken on Ukraine.  And with regards to Hong Kong: what this Abuduwaili Abudureheman incident has done is provide a stick for the authorities to attack the credibility of the news outlets that carried the disappearance story, and to be able to say "See? We were telling the truth" and have proof to show for it -- something which I'm sure they'll make a big deal of for some time to come!

Something that I'm not so sure that the Hong Kong government would like the world to take note of is the trial that began yesterday of 13 individuals accused of "rioting" when they broke into the Legislative Council on July 1st, 2019.  Among them are actor Gregory Wong (who plead not guilty along with five others), and former University of Hong Kong Student Union president Althea Suen and pro-democracy activist-politician Ventus Lau -- both of whom are not even 30 years old yet.

 

The latter two have pleaded guilty; with Suen explaining her decision in a Facebook post which ended as follows: "I have never regretted fighting for freedom, justice & democracy… I am in Hong Kong, in prison, but my mind is still free.” A brave young woman who clearly loves Hong Kong and tried to do what she thought was best and good for it.

 

Another brave Hong Konger who has tried to do what he thought was best and good for Hong Kong, at his own peril is former Apple Daily boss Jimmy Lai. He too was in the news again yesterday; thanks to a Hong Kong court's denial of his "request to terminate his national security trial, pressing ahead with a landmark case seen as part of Beijing’s crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement."

 

As an Associated Press piece noted, Jimmy Lai's "lawyers [had] filed an application to halt the trial, raising concerns that his case was being heard by three judges approved by the city’s leader, instead of a jury.  When Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, it was promised that trials by jury, previously practiced in the former British colony, would be maintained under the city’s constitution. But in a departure from the city’s common law tradition, the security law allows no-jury trials for national security cases.  

 

But: "On Monday, Judges Esther Toh, Susana D’Almada Remedios and Alex Lee unanimously rejected Lai’s request, saying there was no reason to believe they “would be biased, actually or apparently, against” Lai."  Many people are less sure about that. After all, Jimmy Lai has long been a thorn in the flesh of their bosses, the Hong Kong government, and their bosses' bosses, the Chinese government over in Beijing.

 

Also, more than by the way, thus far, the jury-less national security law trials have had a 100% conviction rate -- something very different from the conviction rate of jury trials in Hong Kong. So even if the judges aren't necessarily specifically biased against Jimmy Lai, the evidence would seem to point to their having a predisposition to find all defendants of national security law trials guilty as charged.

 

For the record: Jimmy Lai's national security law case is the first one where the accused has been charged with "collusion against foreign forces".  Also, for the record, that's one of three national security law crimes that he has been charged with.  And, again, let the record show: this is the case for which he has been denied his choice of lawyer: Timothy Owen, King's Counsel.  When it finally gets going on September 3rd, I do hope that the world will not have forgotten this brave man and his beloved Hong Kong.  

"The March on Rome" and "Eastern Front": the first two films I've viewed at the 2023 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

  

The 47th Hong Kong International Film Festival has commenced!

 

The March on Rome (Italy, 2022)

- Mark Cousins, director and co-scriptwriter 

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Reality Bites program

 

It has Rome in its title and is an Italian production but this documentary about the rise -- and fall too, but to a lesser extent -- of fascism in Italy is primarily in English and narrated by its Northern Irish helmer, Mark Cousins -- whose brogue and speaking style some might find calming but I must admit to thinking was at odds with a lot of material presented!  With a far-ranging script co-written by Cousins and Italians Tommaso Renzoni and Tony Saccuci, it splices together such as archival and contemporary film footage, historical photographs and scenes in which actress Alba Rohrwacher playing an Italian mother who's enamoured by fascism before falling out of love with it to advance its arguments; some of which are more compelling than others.   

 

Known for his works on film (notably the 15 hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey), Mark Cousins' The March on Rome discusses the role of cinema as propaganda in supporting the rice of fascim -- particularly by way of a close analysis and dissection of sections of a 49 minute work by Umberto Paradisi (1878-1933) entitled A Noi! Dalla sagra di Napoli al trionfo di Roma that mythologised the titular march of black shirts on Italy's capital in 1922 that led to Benito Mussolini becoming prime minister of the country.  But, actually, I found such as its shorter -- but sharper? -- discussion of fascist architecture, a surprising amount of which is still extant in Italy, to be more on point (along with "Il Duce" and his fellow fascist leaders' proclivity for making speeches from balconies)!

 

Benito Mussolini first appears in The March on Rome as a head floating in, and peering out of, the darkness.  There are scenes in the film in which he appears all powerful but also ones in which he does not appear in control -- and it is interesting to see that this was so even when he was supposed to be approaching or at his peak as well as after he had been sacked in July 1943 by the same monarch, Victor Emmanuel III, who had, Neville Chamberlain-like in 1922, allowed Mussolini to take command of the government.

 

After seeing so much of what Mussolini looked like in life in much of the film, how he looked in death can come as a shock -- even if one's seen the infamous photos of his corpse and that of his mistress hanging upside down in Milan. Seeing a small photo on one's computer screen or (history) book is inadequate preparation for seeing the same image on a big theatrical screen.  But all this is no where as chilling as seeing images of Mussolini and Italian fascism's victims in Ethiopia and Libya, which also appear in The March on Rome, along with horrific statistics of the numbers of people killed there, and by the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese military that Mussolini's Fascists were -- lest we forget -- in an axis of evil with during World War II.

 

These images, more than the footage from A Noi! ("Us!" in Italian), speak to the power of film for me.  Speaking of which: while The March on Rome has visuals which are hard-hitting at times and arresting at others, I must admit to thinking the overall work would have been better served with better audio -- including a narrator with a less laidback-sounding voice than its helmer!        

My rating for this film: 6.5

 

Eastern Front (Ukraine-Latvia-Czech Republic-U.S.A., 2023)

- Vitaly Mansky (who also is the scriptwriter) and Yevhen Titarenko, co-directors

- Part of the HKIFF's Auteurs program

 

"I'm sorry but I feel like throwing up!" Those were my first words to two friends after we got out of the screening of Eastern Front. It's not just that this documentary about the first six months of the still-ongoing war in Ukraine has harrowing footage along with motion sickness-inducing ones filmed by an iPhone of a man running in a battlefield; it's also that it is a psychologically intense watch.

 

This being said; I still want to highly recommend this amazing documentary work, one of whose co-directors, Yevhen Titarenko, is a volunteer paramedic whose battalion, the Hospitallers, have indeed served in the Eastern Front of the war.  (More than by the way: the film's other co-director, Vitaly Mansky, is a veteran Russian director who has spoken out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and and has been placed on a Kremlin wanted list for slander.

 

A good part of Eastern Front takes place at, as its name suggests, the Eastern Front.  We see footage shot from: inside a makeshift ambulance rushing patients to a hospital; inside homes where medics await to be called to duty and from where explosions can be seen and gunfire heard; from trenches that look like something out of a World War I movie (except they are real, and exist in 2022-2023) and where people have been recently killed; and muddy battlefields where the wounded lie and wait to be evacuated.  And we see bravery and caramaderie but also blood, destruction and lots of pain.

But Eastern Front also features talk as well as action, which helps to balance things and also contextualise events and stories.  Some of the conversations take place within war zones but many more take place over in the western part of the country, where there are opportunities for people to relax with a swim in the lake, hanging out with friends, see a comrade's child getting Christened, have dinner with relatives and relatives.  

It may seem strange but the peaceful, "normal" sections of the film actually strengthen it overall.  I think this is not least because it serves to remind the audience that few, if any of the people seen in Eastern Front in military gear and at the battlefront are, in fact, careeer soldiers or even paramedics.  And that they are human beings who have loved ones who care and worry for them and, also, people who they wish to protect -- which is why they are in the situation they are shown to be in but also hope will end before too long, in victory for their nation.

 

My rating for this film: 8.5    

Two films from very different worlds viewed at the 2022 Hong Kong International Film Festival! (Film reviews)

Advertising for the 2022 Hong Kong International Film Festival

 

Klondike (Ukraine-Turkey, 2022)

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Young Cinema Competition (World) program

- Maryna Er Gorbach, director, scriptwriter and editor 

- Starring: Oksana Cherkashyna, Serhi Shadrin, Oleh Shevchuk

 

There was a Q&A with Klondike's director, scriptwriter and editor, Maryna Er Gorbach, after the screening of the film I attended.  If not for it being close to midnight at that point (and my not going to get home after well after midnight that evening as a result), I would have stayed and tried to get in a few questions such as: What's the meaning of the film's title? (Since this Ukrainian-Turkish co-production doesn't take place anywhere near any Klondike I know -- all of which are located in North America); and what's the point for including the real life crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in the picture besides locating the proceedings in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine in the summer of 2014?  (This since I could totally envision this film's story working fine without it.)

 

I'd also have liked to have known if Gorbach had envisioned Klondike to be a straight drama or very dark, absurdist comedy.  If it was the latter, this would better explain the often strange behavior and perspectives of the film's main characters -- a 7-month pregnant countrywoman named Irka (played by Oksana Cherkashyna) who can seem far more obsessed with the state of a baby stroller or sofa than her and her loved ones' physical welfare and safety, and her husband Tolik (portrayed by the late Serhi Shadrin), whose fixation for getting his car back from a separatist friend again seems to surpass his own physical safety and well-being.  

 

The thing though is that there were hardly any laughs to be heard throughout the screening I attended.  Maybe other viewers half a planet away from the world depicted in Klondike found the film's characters and story hard to read too.  Or maybe we were correct in that it meant to be a dramatic work -- in which case what unfolds in the film is absolutely chilling to behold: namely, residents of a wartorn part of the world who look to have become numbed by violence and try to continue living regular, ordinary lives but absolutely can't because what is happening to their country and world is so very tragic and terrible.

 

Even before MH 17 got blown up in the sky above them (by, it is implied, comrades of the friend who "borrowed" Tolik's car that fateful day), Irka and Tolik already saw the front wall of their house destroyed by a stray mortar.  Yet, as in the following days, they continue doing such as preparing food, eating, sleeping and watching TV in their house despite the gaping large hole that exists in it.  Though they try to think otherwise, you just know that this can't go on forever though.  Even so, the last sections of Klondike really offer up a number of shocks that left this (re)viewer further unpleasantly shaken by, and uneasy about, it all.      

My rating for this film: 6.0

 

Love Letter (Japan, 1953) 

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Portraits of Women -- A Tribute to Tanaka Kinuyo program 

- Kinuyo Tanaka, director

- Starring: Masayuki Mori, Juzo Dozan, Jukichi Uno, Yoshiko Kuga

 

Eleven years ago, I viewed a much loved Japanese film entitled Love Letter (in English) at the 2011 Hong Kong International Film Festival.  Like that Shunji Iwai work, Kinuyo Tanaka's decades older Love Letter also hails from Japan but it's quite different in tone and subject matter (though it's true enough that both of these films do feature actual physical love letters!).

 

The first directorial effort of only the second filmmaker in Japanese cinematic history was originally released in 1953 but its story takes place three years earlier, in a Japan that's recovering from World War II but with people who bear psychological scars from the war and early post-occupation years.  Navy veteran and former prisoner of war Reikichi Mayumi (Masayuki Mori) now lives in Tokyo with his younger brother, Hiroshi (Juzo Dozan) -- the latter of whom one gets the impression was too young to be enlisted into any of the branches of the military and thus was spared going to war, resulting in his having a sunnier and more optimistic as well as energetic demeanor and personality than his elder brother.

 

Finding it harder than the entrepeneurial-minded Hiroshi to find a job and get on with his life, Reikichi does perk up some after a chance encounter with a former naval academy classmate.  Having parlayed the English language translation skills he acquired at the academy (along with knowledge of the French language) into an unconventional business, Naoto (Jukichi Uno) enlists Reikichi to help him... write English language love letters for Japanese women whose lovers have returned home to the West (but still, after some pleading and cajoling by way of those epistles, provide some financial aid to them)!

 

Naoto also tells Reikichi that, when doing this, he finds himself becoming more sympathetic to the lot of his clients but it's clear that Reikichi continues to look at them as fallen, sinful women even while turning out to be pretty good at writing love letters for them all the same.  Even when his childhood sweetheart (Yoshiko Kuga) turns out to be one of these women, Reikichi is intent on remaining on his moral high horse; and only begins to get to thinking again after Naoto reads him the kind of lecture which Japanese people are often accused of not doing.  Frankly, it's a real doozy -- and perhaps more than any other dialogue, reminds the viewer that Love Letter's script is by the great Keisuke Kinoshita! 

My rating for this film: 7.5

A documentary about volcanologists and a drama revolving around a teenaged gymnast at the 2022 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

The very existence of the Hong Kong International Film Festival 

helps to make Hong Kong feel like Asia's World City ;b

 

Fire of Love (Canada-U.S.A., 2022) 

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Reality Bites program

- Sarah Dosa, director 

 

At the Hong Kong International Film Festival four years ago, I viewed Werner Herzog's volcano documentary, Into the Inferno. Among the volcanologists featured in it were a French couple, Katia and Maurice Krafft who, among other things, were famed for often getting closer to active volcanoes than most others along with their amazing photographs and film footage of the subjects that they were not just passionate but actually damn near obsessive about.

 

Fire of Love tells their story, with the help of footage they shot -- much of it impressive and mesmerizing -- and interviews they conducted with a number of other people.  And although the Hong Kong International Film Festival program booklet doesn't inform people about this, Sarah Dosa's documentary notes early on that this also a story about a couple who are no longer with us: specifically, Katia and Maurice Krafft lost their lives while filming eruptions at Mount Unzen in Japan in 1991.

 

But rather than dwell on their deaths and turn them into a cautionary tale about daredevils who diced too frequently with death, Fire of Love celebrates their love for each other along with their shared love for volcanoes.  It also gives added dimension to the appreciation of their individual personalities and work by pointing out their differences: such as Katia being a detail-oriented biochemist who brought the micro into focus whereas Maurice the geologist tended to be more expansive and, between the two of them, the more willing to take risks.

For the most part, I really only have one major complaint about this documentary -- and I realize that in the grand scheme of things, it really shouldn't be that big a deal.  The fact of the matter though is that I really would have preferred that Fire of Love had a different narrator besides Miranda July because hers is the kind of voice that is on the soporific side.  Consequently, despite the screening I attended for this film being in the mid afternoon, I found myself feeling like I was being lulled to sleep on a few occasions during the 93 minute offering!  And I also can't help but wonder if, with a brighter sounding narrator, this documentary effort would have felt less workmanlike and more, well, exciting and inspiring.

 

My rating for the film: 6.0

 

Olga (Switzerland-France-Ukraine, 2021)

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Global Vision program

- Elie Grappe, director and co-scriptwriter (with Raphaelle Desplechin)

- Starring:  Anastasiia Budiashkina, Sabrina Rubtsova, Tanya Mikhina

 

The titular heroine of this dramatic offering is a 15 year old gymnast (played by Anastasiia Budiashkina) obsessed with her sport and her ambition to compete in the European Championships.  Despite the best efforts of her journalist mother, Ilona (portrayed by Tanya Mikhina), she's as apolitical as you'd imagine a regular sports obsessed teenager to be.  But, what with their being Ukrainians, politics is not something that they can ignore -- with it introducing into their personal lives and the personal and the political ending up being interwoven and well nigh inseparable.  

 

After an attempt is made on Ilona's life that also puts her beloved daughter's life in danger, Ilona sends Olga away to safety in the form of Switzerland, the home country of her father, who died when she was young (and whose father -- Olga's grandfather -- has not forgiven Ilona for this happening).  There, Olga signs away her Ukrainian citizenship and officially becomes Swiss.  She also joins the Swiss national gymnastics team but, even while she may act like she is above all a gymnast, the ties to Ukraine stay strong -- and not just because of Ilona either.   

 

While Olga is in Switzerland, the Maidan Revolution (about which there's a powerful film, Winter on Fire) breaks out. Ilona gets caught up in it; and so, too, does Olga's best friend and captain of the Ukrainian women's gymnastics team, Sasha (Sabrina Rubtsova).  And while Olga is a fictional work, director Elia Grappe incorporated real life footage of the Maidan Revolution, including ones showing violent attacks by the authorities on the protestors and journalists present there to jam home what Ukranians have been fighting for, and have been doing for a number of years now. 

 

Those scenes which take place in Ukraine are painful to view but no less agonizing are those involving Olga in Switzerland.  The loneliness of the exile and the difficulties trying to incorporate into another society (even one where one can speak at least one of its native languages, albeit not like a native) are shown very clearly and well.  Ditto the yearning to go home and join the fight even while others implore you not to do so.  Also, do not underestimate the excruciating frustration of having one's country's struggles being dismissed by foreigners who think they know what's actually going on and better.  This perhaps particularly so if those foreigners also happen to be older relatives.

 

On a personal note: I wonder if I'd have been less sympathetic and understanding of Olga's outwardly stoic character and behavior before June 2019.  Now I see Olga and recognize that a number of its characters exhibited signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); a condition that many Hong Kongers and Ukranians  sadly know all too well.   

 

My rating for this film: 7.0