Venice film festival 2019: Yonfan animation in competition for Golden Lion – first Hong Kong film since 2011 to vie for top prize
- Director’s first film since 2009’s Prince of Tears, which also competed for top prize in Venice, No. 7 Cherry Lane is story of a love triangle in ’60s Hong Kong
- The last time Hong Kong films were in competition for the top prize at one of the world’s three leading film festivals was 2011, also in Venice
Lovers of Hong Kong cinema can breathe a sigh of relief: for the first time in eight years, a Hong Kong film will compete for the top prize at the Venice International Film Festival – art-house director Yonfan’s animated feature No. 7 Cherry Lane – festival organisers announced on Thursday.
Once a fixture on the international film circuit, Hong Kong films have been conspicuous by their absence from the big festivals for much of the past decade. Established filmmakers have turned their attention to making mainstream films targeted at the lucrative mainland China market, and while a new generation of aspiring directors shows promise, none can yet be considered world-class.
The last Hong Kong films to be selected in the main competition section of one of the world’s three most prestigious festivals – Cannes, Venice and Berlin – were Ann Hui On-wah’s A Simple Life and Johnnie To Kei-fung’s Life Without Principle) at the 2011 Venice festival.
Set in the politically charged Hong Kong of the late 1960s, No. 7 Cherry Lane revolves around a love triangle between Ziming (voiced by Alex Lam Tak-shun), an English literature student at the University of Hong Kong; Meiling (Zhao Wei), the woman he is tutoring; and her middle-aged mother Mrs Yu (Sylvia Chang Ai-chia), who is self-exiled from Taiwan.
The voice cast includes several actors who have appeared in previous Yonfan films, such as Teresa Cheung Siu-wai (2004’s Colour Blossoms), Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan (Prince of Tears), and Daniel Wu Yin-cho and Stephen Fung Tak-lun, who co-starred in Bishonen (1998). Fellow filmmakers Tian Zhuangzhuang, Hui, and Fruit Chan lend their voices to supporting roles.
“It is a story of love in desperation with all the contradictory ingredients,” Yonfan wrote in the production notes for the film, which features caricatures that were rendered by animators in 3D before being committed to rice paper as 2D images. “It is my love letter to Hong Kong and cinema. A story about yesterday, today and tomorrow. Above all, it is a film of liberation.”
The 2019 Venice film festival opens on August 28.
