Based in the heart of Hong Kong, the district of Hung Hom feels like a city within a city, a place where the living and the dead coexist almost side by side. Coffins glide through narrow streets toward nearby funeral homes, while a few steps away, commuters and street vendours fight for space among the…
Category: Foreign Films
2025 ALULA Film Festival: “The Homeless” Review
Homelessness is one of the most visible manifestations of social inequality. Globally, individuals experiencing homelessness often face multiple layers of marginalization – not only lacking stable housing but also encountering barriers to healthcare, employment as well as social services. The causes of homelessness are complex and intertwined, ranging from poverty, unemployment, and housing shortages to…
How Annemarie Jacir Brings Palestine’s Forgotten Uprising to the Screen – “Palestine 36” Review
Some filmmakers tell stories, and some preserve entire histories through their work. Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir belongs to the latter. Across her extraordinary career, from Salt of This Sea to When I Saw You and Wajib, Jacir’s work comes from a place of honesty, an understanding of her people’s struggle, and a refusal to let their…
69th BFI London Film Festival: “Hair, Paper, Water” Review
Vietnamese cinema has long existed in the margins of Southeast Asian film culture, overshadowed by the global recognition of its regional neighbours. Yet, in recent years, a resurgence has begun to take shape, led by filmmakers whose work values poetic observation over plot. Among them, Trương Minh Quý. His latest collaboration with Belgian filmmaker Nicolas…
69th BFI London Film Festival: In Conversation with Hsu Ya-Ting, Director of “Island of the Winds”
Born in Taiwan shortly before the end of martial law, Hsu Ya-Ting has become an important voice in Taiwanese documentary cinema. Her films weave together the personal and the political, exploring how memory and place shape people’s lives. With Island of the Winds, she tells an intimate story of the elderly residents of Losheng Sanatorium,…
69th BFI London Film Festival: “With Hasan in Gaza” Review
Few films feel as urgent as With Hasan in Gaza. Especially now, when Palestinian voices are so often drowned out, this documentary resurrects what has been erased: streets, faces, and laughter that once existed in Gaza before repeated cycles of war and occupation. While Palestine continues to endure military occupation and the horrors of genocide,…
30th Busan International Film Festival: “Dear Stranger” Review
Tetsuya Mariko’s Dear Stranger begins not with the disappearance of a child, but with the erosion of a marriage. Kenji (Hidetoshi Nishijima: Drive My Car, Serpent’s Path), a Japanese architecture professor in New York, and Jane (Gwei Lun-Mei: The Wild Goose Lake), a Taiwanese-American puppeteer who has put her art aside to raise their young…
82nd Venice Film Festival: “Girl” Review
Girl was the directorial debut of SHU Qi. It was undoubtedly one of the most anticipated films at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. Girl marked SHU Qi’s first step into directing. It captured immense attention at the event. SHU Qi is a regular presence at Cannes, Berlinale, and the Venice Film Festival. Her first arrival…
82nd Venice Film Festival: “The Sun Rises on All of Us” Review
One of the benefits of seeing films at their very earliest screenings, before they’ve even been unveiled to the world at a splashy festival premiere, is being able to experience them truly blind. In the case of The Sun Rises On Us All, the latest film from Chinese auteur Cai Shangjun, which just premiered in…
82nd Venice Film Festival: In Conversation with Anuparna Roy, Director of “Songs of Forgotten Trees”
At the 82nd Venice Film Festival, Anuparna Roy’s Songs of Forgotten Trees was a rare kind of debut, one that challanges the ways Indian cinema has historically positioned women: not as symbols or accessories to a male narrative, but as living, breathing individuals. Her film places women firmly at the centre and lets them be…
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