A documentary entitled Never Too Late, and another showing his people's freedom came too late for its titular subject to enjoy! (Film reviews)

  

 People in focus (including director Rikki Choy (2nd from left),

producer Miney Ye (3rd from left) and main song singer 

Gigi Leung (on the far right) at Never Too Late's world premiere 

Never Too Late (Hong Kong, 2025)

- Rikki Choy, director

- Part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program 

 

It used to be that one could look forward to quite a few films having their world premieres at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. This year, however, there are just six of them -- with even its Opening Films (including Chong Keat Aun's Pavane for an Infant) having had their world premieres elsewhere some months ago.  Still, I did catch at least one of them: Never Too Late; a fairly modest and very local documentary produced by Phoenix TV, whose major star power came by way of the song that plays as the end credits roll being performed by singer-actress Gigi Leung.

 

Never Too Late appears to be the feature film directorial debut of Rikki Choy -- and there are aspects of the work that one can't help but think would be handled better by someone with more experience and expertise.  At the same time though, its subject, Hong Kong's natural world and its biodiversity, is something she is familiar with (and looks to have a passion for), having been one of the directors of Phoenix TV’s Hong Kong Nature Stories documentary series.  And ditto re it being something that all of the four individuals whose stories are told in this feature length documentary care very much for in their own way.

 

Human Ip is an artist-poet who has become a farmer and lives in Lai Chi Wo.  Hidy Yu is a model with a love for the sea, who broke up with her partner because she was repulsed by his love for spearfishing.  Fun Hon-shing enjoys what he refers to as "wellness photography" in the wilds of Hong Kong (and is the director of a short film I viewed some time back on the Life (Cycle) of the Hong Kong Newt).  And then there's Anthony Choy, a property agent who likes observing, sketching and painting birds, flowers and many other natural subjects.

Commendably, Never Too Late doesn't shy away from showing such as the contradiction of Anthony Choy's working for a company whose projects could be said to intrude into, and even destroy, some natural habitats and Human Ip being in conflict with some of her neighbors in Lai Chi Wo over their perception and treatment of the feral cows that she loves but others find to be a big nuisance.  We also see that getting too close to nature can result in human pain and animal death.      

In fact, Never Too Late is actually less upbeat overall than its title might imply!  And is less, for want of a better word, propaganda-like than one might expect, given it having the support of official, including government, organizations. It additionally presents a more complex picture than may seem to be the case at first glance; with there being certain social undercurrents that aren't explicitly commented upon -- or are mentioned or alluded to only in passing -- yet are evidently there if you know where to look for them.  

 

In some ways, this mirrors one's experiences with the natural world in Hong Kong: in that, it's actually more pervasive and around you than many may realize; yet it does take a bit of digging, change of perspective and/or wandering and veering off the beaten path, in order to see of it!  Also, no, it's not perfect -- the natural world, Hong Kong itself and the film -- but, all in all, its existence still is worth appreciating. 

 

My rating for this film: 7.0

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (U.S.A.-France, 2024)

- Raoul Peck, director-scriptwriter-producer

- LaKeith Stanfield, voice cast

 

There are two filmmakers who I know served as their countries' Minister of Cultures for a time.  They also happen to be filmmakers whose films I've been bowled over by.  I considered South Korea's Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy (1999) and Oasis (2002) to be masterpieces.  I feel the same way about Haiti's Raoul Peck's Lumumba (2000) and I Am Not Your Negro (2016).  Thus it was that Raoul Peck being the director of Ernest Cole: Lost and Found was what got me determined to watch this documentary work; not my having any prior knowledge of its subject.  

The story of South African photographer Ernest Cole is one I found moving.  A pioneering black photographer who was born in 1940, he lived through Apartheid and documented it; then moved to New York City to try to escape from it, only to encounter difficulties there, lose his way and, eventually, lose his life -- sadly before Apartheid came to an end, so he never saw Nelson Mandela and his country free.

 

Ernest Cole: Lost and Found has interview footage of its titular character.  But we actually see far more of his photographs than his visage in the documentary.  Black and white photographs that show a cruelly segregated world; one where the whites were privileged and thoroughly aware of it, and the blacks oppressed in ways that look designed to break the spirit as well as hearts.

 

Ernest Cole left South Africa in 1966.  Having secreted his photographs of South Africa under Apartheid with him, he was able to publish House of Bondage: A South African Black Man Exposes in His Own Pictures and Words the Bitter Life of His Homeland Today.  Sadly, to judge by what I saw in the film, he never really was able to produce as good work outside of his home country as he did in it.  It seems that some of his work was lost; as was he.   

 

Perhaps not coincidentally, it feels like Ernest Cole: Lost and Found also lost its way somewhat midway through.  I consequently found the latter half of the film to not be as compelling as the first half.  Even the bombshell revelation late in the documentary that a collection of 60,000 negatives was found at a bank vault in Stockholm in 2017 and given to his heirs leaves more questions, and feelings of dissatisfaction than any sense of joy or relief.  

I must say though that the end dedication to people in exile everywhere emotionally impacted me quite a bit though -- as it got me thinking of exiled Hongkongers who left because they didn't feel they could be safe in their home city and/or chaffed at the injustice that exists in it, yet left their heart here even while they moved thousands of miles to try to make a new life in a different continent.

 

My rating for this film: 6.0

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