Top 5 films to watch in Hong Kong this week: July 14-20
Confronting refugee documentary, French cult classic and Johnnie To crime caper among the pick of cinema listings
Click on film titles to read scmp.com reviews
1. Fire at Sea
The Golden Bear winner at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and one of the essential documentaries in recent years, Gianfranco Rosi’s meditative account of Europe’s migrant disaster is all the more powerful for its lack of commentary. Humanity needs no explaining.
(Now showing)
2. The Big Blue
The Luc Besson film that became a cult phenomenon, this 1988 deep sea drama makes use of spectacular underwater photography to tell its story of rivalry and obsession, inspired by the life of free diver Jacques Mayol.
(July 16, part of UA CineHub’s FilmSporting programme)
3. Three
Probably just because he can, action auteur Johnnie To Kei-fung sets his latest crime thriller entirely within a hospital ward. The cat-and-mouse game among his three protagonists is arguably a bigger attraction than the tour de force shoot-out that he belatedly ushers in.
(Opens on July 14)
4. Hannah Arendt
The German-Jewish journalist and philosopher – best known for coining the phrase “the banality of evil” – is passionately portrayed by actress Barbara Sukowa in Margarethe von Trotta’s intelligent biopic.
(July 15, part of German Film Forum’s A Man Can Make a Difference programme)
5. Wansei Back Home
The little-known stories of Japanese settlers during Taiwan’s colonial era are gently reconstructed in this poignant documentary, which follows several Taiwan-born Japanese as these elderly individuals trace their long-forgotten family roots from half a century ago.
(Opens on July 14)
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