Age of Valiant
HK's valiant 'frontliners' are masked, black-clad youth unafraid to use violence against their police and government. Hear their voices, hopes, and dreams.
11'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2020
A group of desperate kids, marginalized and violently out of control, are holed up in a squalid Hong Kong tenement. Cops are a dimly perceived alien force, to be avoided at all costs. It's not 2019, but 1988 in this searing portrayal of underclass Hong Kong youth raging in a city under British colonial rule. These junior gang members fight to claim the city for themselves, struggling against the profound sense of alienation that shrouds and criminalizes this underclass.
Laurence Lau's documentary style, post-new wave social realist melodrama doesn't glamorize Triad life. Its cast of young non-stars throw themselves into one of the darkest visions of social disfunction and nihilism ever to come out of Hong Kong's cinematic factories. Facing a grim present with no imaginable future, the kids fall into drugs, brazen assaults and a horrifying rape. Their violence tips, tragically, inwards: interiorized and self-inflicted. They are ready burn their world down.
IFFR 2020
Programme IFFR 2020
Hong Kong, the most cinematic city in the world, reveals through its films – old and new – the political, social and economic tensions tearing it apart today.
Read more about this programmeHK's valiant 'frontliners' are masked, black-clad youth unafraid to use violence against their police and government. Hear their voices, hopes, and dreams.
11'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2020
A social critique of class-based ultra-dense living conditions; a political critique of anti-democratic politics; and a masterpiece of Hong Kong cinema.
145'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2020
A unique, virtually wordless dance poem: a thrilling pop/art tribute to the power of Hong Kong's indomitable people.
73'
Hong Kong
IFFR 2020