Why so sensitive? A closer look at Trivisa, the Hong Kong Film Awards best picture banned in China – just like Ten Years

Its directors wouldn’t acknowledge crime thriller’s political undercurrents ahead of its release, and were eyeing a cinematic run in China, so what did censors object to? A director helming part of banned film Ten Years, perhaps

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Actors, directors and producer of Trivisa pose after it won the best film and best director awards, among others, at the Hong Kong Film Awards in Hong Kong. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:45pm, 10 Apr 2017Updated: 3:02pm, 10 Apr 2017

For the second year in a row, mention of the best picture winner at the Hong Kong Film Awards is prohibited in China.

But unlike the case of the popular but controversial 2016 winner Ten Years , a dystopian sociopolitical fable that audaciously envisioned the impact of the Chinese Communist Party on the Hong Kong way of life, China’s ban on 2017 best picture Trivisa has been met more with bemusement than surprise in its home city.

Trivisa’s co-directors Vicky Wong Wai-kit (left), Frank Hui Hok-man (centre), and Jevons Au. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Rumours began to circulate in early February that media broadcasts of the awards ceremony would be interrupted in China whenever Trivisa was involved – and that was exactly what happened on Sunday.

The promotional poster for Trivisa, released on April 7, 2016 in Hong Kong.

Live updates of the ceremony were blocked on some websites in China whenever the film was mentioned, and the film’s title has been erased from the winners’ lists published by Chinese media, leaving behind only the people’s names (so that readers knew only that Gordon Lam Ka-tung was named best actor, but not which film he won it for). The best picture category was simply left out in these reports.

Another film in the running, Weeds on Fire , which won the awards for best new performer and best original song, is bookended by footage shot in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district during 2014’s “umbrella movement” protest sit-in, and suffered a similar fate.

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