Top five films to watch in Hong Kong this week (June 8-14), from The Summer is Gone to Afterimage

Click on film titles to read SCMP.com reviews

1 The Summer is Gone

Executive-produced by celebrated Tibetan-Chinese filmmaker Pema Tseden, first-time director Zhang Dalei’s 1990s-set drama captures both the poignant dynamics of a family living in Inner Mongolia and the evolving social reality in a China on the cusp of drastic economic reforms. (Opens on June 8)

2 Polina

Few movies capture a dancer’s obsessive quest to find the right kind of style quite as persuasively as this beautiful adaptation of a graphic novel by Bastien Vives. A must-see for lovers of dance, the film also marks the feature directing debut of renowned choreographer Angelin Preljocaj. (Opens on June 8)

3 The Sense of an Ending

Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling lead the delightful cast of this restrained yet consistently enthralling adaptation of Julian Barnes’ prize-winning novel, which considers the fallibility of memories through a retiree’s emotional recollections of events that took place in his early 20s. (Now showing)

4 Afterimage

The late, great Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda completed this powerful portrait of the avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski before he died at the age of 90, and it’s hard not to be moved by his angry manifesto on the vital importance of artistic freedom – even under authoritarian rule. (Opens on June 8)

5 Wonder Woman

It’s a strange record: Patty Jenkins’ stand-alone superhero movie has just enjoyed the highest-ever US opening weekend for a movie directed by a woman, beating Fifty Shades of Grey. What’s more unfathomable: the film has even restored faith in the regularly mediocre DC Extended Universe. (Now showing)

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