Most foreign filmmakers who shoot in Hong Kong try to capture the city’s noise and frantic pace. That wasn’t true of German director Jonas Bak, who shot his quiet and thoughtful Wood and Water there in 2019. Bak, a fan of Taiwanese art-house star Tsai Ming-liang ’s “slow cinema”, used his camera to slow things down to capture what he felt was a spirituality that underlies Hong Kong’s hustle and bustle. “The film is based around the ideas of stagnation,” Bak said in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post in New York, where he was promoting Wood and Water ’s US release. The film started screening in New York from March 24, and is opening in Los Angeles on April 15, with a national release to follow. “The first part emphasises that stagnation, and portrays the main character, Anke, reflecting on her life and her past in Germany,” he says. “Me and the cameraman had the idea of framing things like we were taking photographs, keeping things very still and being very careful and very observant.” Fifty-year-old Anke’s journey of self-discovery starts when she leaves Germany and arrives in Hong Kong about halfway through the film to try to find her missing son. “When she comes to Hong Kong, we start to move the camera more freely, to reflect how her curiosity is aroused, and how she begins to find herself in a different way. I wanted to show that there are different layers to Hong Kong, a kind of beauty under all the noise,” Bak says. The main character is played by Bak’s mother, whose name is also Anke, and he says that the film was geared to reflect her experience of Hong Kong. Arriving in the city to find her missing son, Anke befriends a building doorman, and chats to various characters like a social activist, a fortune-teller and a doctor. Anke’s search for her son gradually morphs into a search for her inner self, while the protests rage in the background. “I was aiming for a kind of hushed and sensitive cinema. It is inspired by the main character, who is my mother, and the way she goes about life, which is quite calmly,” Bak says. “I wanted that to be reflected in the shape of the film, in the form of the film. It is part of her character to be distant, but it is a warm distance, a curious distance – she wouldn’t ever get in your face,” he says, noting that “it’s as much my mother’s film as mine”. “My mother had visited Hong Kong before, and she knew it quite well,” Bak adds. “At the start, the script was more dramatic, as it involved a kind of hopeless search for her son. We decided to tone that down to make it seem less of an anxious dream or nightmare – we wanted to bring it down to reality,” he says. It was easy to work with his mother, Bak notes. “I decided where she would go in Hong Kong, and she just went ahead and did it. She was comfortable during the shoot, so she coped with it well, and reacted naturally.” Although Anke does indulge in some touristic activities, Bak – who had lived on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island for a couple of years prior to making the movie – was careful to avoid clichéd representations of Hong Kong life. “I didn’t want to make a film that said, ‘This is our life in the West and this is their life in Hong Kong, look how different it is,’” he says. “I wanted to do something that connects everything together. “The idea was to follow how my mother would see this journey by tapping into a layer of Hong Kong which appeals to her, and depicting the kind of things she would naturally be attracted to. “She finds a spiritual layer represented by tai chi, and the people she talks to are those that she would naturally be interested in, like the social activist – who was an actor – and the doorman, who is a charming and welcoming guy.” Bak says that the local non-actors, like doorman Patrick Lo, were happy to appear in his film. “They trusted me, and they were comfortable as they knew it was a small film,” he says. “The doorman said he was an extra in a Wong Kar-wai film , and he expected this to be a much bigger production, so he was nervous to start with. He relaxed when he realised that it was just a couple of Westerners with a not-so-big camera and became very confident. “The activist is an actor, Ricky Yeung, and we rehearsed. The doctor is a real doctor, as we had to change the cast last minute, and we found a real doctor who kind of gives us a lecture.” Wood and Water was shot in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island at the height of the anti-government protests , and Bak says they filmed many of the demonstrations. “It became tempting to add more about what was going on politically to the story,” he says. “We shot close to the protests, but we didn’t make it a political film, as that wasn’t my aim.” He explains how they went out in their press vests with a 16mm camera to shoot footage. “We nearly got run over by the police. We also shot scenes where the activist tells Anke much more about what was going on. But they didn’t make the final cut, as it diverted attention from what the film was about. “I wanted to stick to my story of an older woman who is looking for her son, and along the way, finds something else and discovers herself,” he says. Bak says although he lived in Hong Kong – his wife was working as a lawyer – he decided it wasn’t the place for him. But the film nonetheless shows the city in a warm and gentle light, and one of the Western characters says some tender lines about her stay. “I didn’t like it when I got here, it was too hectic and too bright. But when you look beneath that, it is actually beautiful, and the people are kind,” she notes. While Bak admits the lines were improvised by the actress – his friend Alexandra Batten – he agrees with the sentiment. “I do believe in the many layers of Hong Kong,” he says. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook