2017 Hong Kong International Film Festival’s full programme line-up announced

Masterclasses by Olivier Assayas and Agnieszka Holland, new films by Jim Jarmusch, Yoji Yamada and Todd Solondz, foreign language Oscar winner The Salesman, free screenings of 20 post-1997 Hong Kong films among highlights

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A still from Giddens Ko's mon mon mon Monsters, the HKIFF's closing film.

Published: 4:34pm, 14 Mar 2017Updated: 4:34pm, 14 Mar 2017

Screenings of foreign language Oscar winner The Salesman and new films by the likes of Jeff Nichols, Jim Jarmusch, Todd Solondz and Yoji Yamada, an Edward Yang retrospective and free screenings of 20 post-1997 Hong Kong films are among the highlights in the full programme of the 41st Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), announced today.

As previously reported, the festival will open on April 11 with the world premiere of Love Off the Cuff , the third instalment in Hong Kong director Pang Ho-cheung’s romantic comedy series after 2010’s Love in a Puff and 2012’s Love in the Buff.

The festival will close on April 25 with the high-school horror comedy mon mon mon Monsters, the second directorial effort by prolific Taiwanese author Giddens Ko (2011’s You are the Apple of My Eye). Ko has previously acted as producer and screenwriter for various adaptations of his books, including Café. Waiting. Love (2014) and last year’s The Tenants Downstairs .

A still from Edward Yang's A One and a Two.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Edward Yang, and the HKIFF will screen all seven films by the great Taiwanese filmmaker in a special retrospective programme, “Edward Yang, 10-year Commemoration”. Two of Yang’s closest collaboraters, screenwriter Hsiao Yeh and Yang’s widow, Kaili Peng, will meet the audience respectively after the screenings of A Brighter Summer Day (April 16) and A One and a Two (April 13).

Movie lovers should check out the three masterclasses at the festival. One will be led by the acclaimed French film writer-director Olivier Assayas after screenings of his new film Personal Shopper and the five-and-a-half-hour epic Carlos; another by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Spoor); and the third by Hungarian writer-director Ildikó Enyedi, who won the Golden Bear award for offbeat romance On Body and Soul at the Berlin Film Festival in February.