What to see at Hong Kong’s Sundance Film Festival 2018, from Hearts Beat Loud to Three Identical Strangers
Crowd-pleasing film about a father and daughter bonding over music, and documentary about identical triplets raised in separate families who meet by chance, among our top picks for festival offshoot
At the January premiere of Hearts Beat Loud, the closing film of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the director of the event, John Cooper, came up to a group of journalists and asked if there should be more films like that in the programme. The answer was a resounding yes.
Hong Kong audiences will have the opportunity to see the crowd-pleasing film at Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong, which opens this week. On the programme are 10 feature films, two documentary features and a selection of short films.
Hearts Beat Loud showcases the musical and acting talent of Kiersey Clemons, who has come a long way since her debut in Dope. At the festival’s awards ceremony she sang to the guitar strums of Nick Offerman, who plays her father in the film, and there was clearly a bond between them.
The film tells the story of Frank (Offerman), the owner of a failing Brooklyn record shop, who bonds with his daughter Sam (Clemons) playing music that goes viral. They clash when she wants to stick to her plan of leaving to study medicine.
“It’s a family film, a music-driven film and a story I’d always wanted to tell,” says writer-director Brett Haley. “It’s a sweet, heart-warming and sometimes funny tale that is a good antidote for a lot of what’s wrong in the world right now.”
