Asian feast for the hungry cinephile

With Hollywood kicking its major releases to 2021, Hong Kong cinemas, with few exceptions, have been dotted with dregs sitting on the proverbial shelf with no real destination, or films already available on streaming or DVD. With the Hong Kong International Film Festival not returning until its regular slot next March (fingers crossed), the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival (HKAFF) is stepping into the void not a minute too soon.

This year's HKAFF has a diverse roster of 54 new, often award-winning films from the Middle East to the dateline. In the line-up are dramas tackling contemporary issues from poverty to social upheaval, clever genre films, coming-of-age tales, unconventional romances and everything in between. There are more than a handful of highlights.

Opening the 17th edition is actor Chan Kin-long's directorial debut, Hand Rolled Cigarette. Another product of Create HK's remarkably successful First Feature Film Initiative, the story pivots on the budding friendship between a former Hong Kong Military Service Corps officer and the Southeast Asian man he shelters from a triad. Starring the always reliable Gordon Lam Ka-tung, it's a novel spin on a crime drama, and speaks to where Hong Kong is, socially, right now. Closing the fest is pop-punk band ToNick singer Chiu Sin-hang's One Second Champion, a fantastical genre mash-up about a single dad who can see one second into the future being exploited by a boxing promoter.

Among this year's most notable entries are Mohammed Rasoulof's There Is No Evil, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin in February. Made despite a filmmaking prohibition and arrest, and shot in secret, Rasoulof's latest is another critique of Iran's theocratic government, this time of its death penalty policy.

Two of Japan's most prominent women filmmakers are back behind the camera this year. Naomi Kawase's True Mothers follows a couple and their adopted son in confronting his birth mother, who is demanding they return the child to her. In The Shape of Red, Mishima Yukiko's adaptation of Rio Shimamoto's novel, housewife Toko defies social convention and expectation to exercise personal agency and finds herself caught between the desire and duty millions of Japanese women continue to face.

This year's special screenings, unsurprisingly, are responsive to the mess that has been 2020. First up is Ichikawa Kon's restored 1965 epic documentary Tokyo Olympiad, an ode to both the first Tokyo Summer Games and the postponed 2020 event. 76 Days by Wu Hao and Chen Weixi focuses on life during lockdown and the early struggle by medical staff and patients to fight the virus. Spotlights on Taiwan and South Korea illuminate themes such as the ongoing renaissance in the industry and the cinematic legacy of resistance to military dictatorship, forced relocations due to redevelopment, Japanese occupation and corruption.

Rounding out the highlights is a documentary cut from the "stranger-than-fiction" cloth. Ryan White's Assassins deconstructs the bizarre assassination plot that saw two waitresses murder North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half brother Kim Jong-nam in 2017 because they thought they were participating in a reality TV prank show. That's just strange enough for 2020.