Hong Kong Film Festival 2026 Archives

Deadline
(自殺通告)
(2025)

Deadline (自殺通告) (2025)

Director – Kiwi Chow – 2025 – Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK – Cert. 15 tbc – 118m

****

A secondary school focused entirely on maximising its students’ exam results is upset by intimations of pending suicide and use of performance-enhancing drugs – plays as part of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues

The students of En-Shan Secondary School, clad in distinctive uniforms of purple shirt with militaristic shoulder boards and dark grey tie, perform aggressive workout moves as they chant their school litany extolling hard work leading to success. Principal Kung (Anthony Wong Chau Sang from Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak,2002; Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; My Name Ain’t Suzie, Angie Chen, 1985 – this latter showing in this year’s HKFF) encourages them in the idea that present suffering leads to later success.

The ubiquitous iSmart system contains a database of vocabulary the students must master to game the exam system; its latest 2.3 iteration uses eye-tracking software to record how much time the pupil is taking in direct eye contact with the teacher. It makes the surveillance technology of Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024) sound amateurish by comparison, even if, ultimately, Deadline is the more satisfying viewing experience overall.… Read the rest

Palimpsest
The story of a name
(隱蹟之書：重寫自我)

Palimpsest: The story of a name (隱蹟之書：重寫自我)

Director – Mary Stephen – 2025 – France – Cert. – 108m

*****

Exploring her family history, Hong Kong-born Mary Stephen delves into the mystery behind her surname being British rather than Chinese – plays at the Barbican as is the opening film of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues

The director narrates her film in the first person, talking about the fact of her father’s name being Henry Stephen on his birth certificate, while her mother retained her Chinese name on the document. Mary Stephen herself was born in Hong Kong in 1953, the same year as Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in Britain. Archive images of Hong Kong from that year show a strange dislocation, with images of the new English monarch jostling side by side with Chinese words on buildings. A British built clock tower looks strangely out of place.

She worked for years with celebrated New Wave director Eric Rohmer as his editor. His name, too, was a palimpsest.

Her father died and was buried in Canada in 1979, alongside her mother. When the family first moved there, she was a teenager.… Read the rest