HKIFF50’s ‘Firebird Awards’ eclectic ensemble promises enriching filmi fiesta

S Viswanath

One of the mainstays and anchor points of the Hong Kong International Film Festival the “Firebird Awards” Competition Section covets the itinerant cinephile and audiences alike.

This specially curated competition section recognises innovative and emerging voices in global cinema, with entries judged on their creativity, technical skill, and artistic excellence adjudicated by an elite panel of distinguished jury members who are mandated to pick a total of 12 awards from under four different competition sections.

These jury members comprises of renowned film directors, industry professionals, critics and talents. The four competition categories include Young Cinema (Chinese Language), Young Cinema (World), Documentary, Short Films, besides a FIPRESCI Prize also being awarded. The Firebird Awards of Documentary Competition and Short Film Competition being eligible for Oscars submission.

The 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF50) this time around has a total of 42 entries with eight films apiece under Young Cinema Competition (Chinese Language) World & Documentary Sections and 18 short films, participating in the four competitions, wherein an independent jury for each section, will pick a total of 12 awards. The results being announced at the “Awards Night (closing) Ceremony” held at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on the concluding day of the film festival on April 12.

The Firebird Awards Young Cinema Competition (Chinese-language), now in its eighth year, will see Philip Yung, Hong Kong director, Liang Ming, two-time Firebird Awards Best Director winner, and Edward Lam, leading Hong Kong theatre director, scriptwriter, and founder of Edward Lam Dance Theatre, picking the award winners.

The jury of New Film Competition (World) Section composed of three renowned filmmakers Hungarian director and screenwriter Edi Goan Yidi, the Indonesian director Edwin along with Wendell Witt, Program Director of Ghent Film Festival in Belgium, will pick the four Firebird Award winners.

The eight films in the Documentary Competition, will see the Jury comprising Park Ki-yong, former chairman of Korean Film Promotion Committee and director, Hong Kong filmmaker Tsang Chui-shan, and producer Elli Nyali, selecting the two outstanding documentaries.

The jury of International Short Film Competition which has renowned British artist and experimental film director Ben Rivers, South Korean animation director Jung You-mi, and Wen Nian (Man Lim-chung), famous Hong Kong art director and costume designer, will select the two films that stand out from 18 shortlisted short films.

THE YOUNG CINEMA COMPETITION (CHINESE LANGUAGE) films in fray are Ah Girl by Ang Geck Geck Priscilla. The 94 min debut feature, drawing from director’s own memories of growing up in 1990s Singapore, is “a delicate coming-of-age tale” spotlighting on the titular character Ah Girl and her little sister. The two siblings caught between their feuding parents, are constantly shuttled around by their adults who see them as just burdens. How Ah Girl navigates the complexities of situation the two are boxed in despite endless heartbreak forms the film’s fulcrum.

The directorial debut feature AMOEBA by Tan Si You is a 98 min film is a daring indictment of her home country’s conformist education system and playfully idiosyncratic ode to adolescent mischief. How a rebel Xin Yu who becomes fast friends with three kindred spirits in class and decide to form a ‘gang’ in search of liberation from the rigid social constraints of their society forms the heady plot of the film.

A DANCE WITH RAINBOWS by Lee Yi-Shan is a 115min debut sports flick about a female amateur boxer Ling trying to hold her fractured family together, while helping her mother prepare cheap lunchboxes. An poignant character study that emphasises its protagonist’s harsh reality, the film also tackles the moral quandary faced by athletes when sports and commerce collide.

DEEP QUIET ROOM by noted Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Shen Ko-Shang is his 107min debut feature based on Lin Xiuhe’s (Lin Hsiu-ho) novella, which film follows an architect trying to pick up the pieces of his life, following his wife’s suicide. Described as a family suspense drama, the film follows a couple whose lives begin to fracture when a pregnancy triggers long-buried trauma.

LINKA LINKA by Lhasa, Tibet born film director Kangdrun is a 100 min coming of age feature which spotlights on Samgyi who returns to her native Lhasa to make a film about her childhood. Inheriting Pema Tseden’s legacy in depicting emotional portraits of modern Tibetan life, Kangdrun’s is a lyrical and ambitious directorial feature debut, exploring Lhasa’s shifting landscapes, capturing the younger generation’s lost and found.

The 89 min NIGHTTIME SOUNDS is the sophomore flick by Chinese director Zhang Zhongchen is an ode to pastoral life exploring the suppressed longings and desires of rural Chinese women from an innocent child’s perspective. How eight-year-old Qing comes across a mysterious boy who is searching for his mother and how he helps Qing uncover long-dormant secrets about her own parents forms the visually captivating blend of magical realism and social commentary flick.

Set in the hometown of Xi’an NUMBER 23 by debutant Xia Hao is a 91min absorbing portrait of a strained mother-son relationship. Wu Ji, after being laid off from her factory job learns she is carrying her boyfriend’s baby and making matters worse, her teenage son, has been acting out since his father’s disappearance.

SHANGHAI DAUGHTER by Agnis Shen Zhongmin, is a 94min is a docu-feature revolving around Following Ming, a middle-aged woman from Shanghai, who travels south to Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture following her father’s demise, seeking details about her father, a ‘sent-down youth’ relocated during the Cultural Revolution.

YOUNG CINEMA COMPETITION (WORLD) brings an array of fascinating films from across the world providing for a multifarious thematic sojourn. 17 by Kosara Mitic from North Macedonia is a 105 min coming-of-age feature debut providing unflinching portrait of teen Sara, 17, who, on a school field trip across the border to Greece, is thrown into close proximity with her peers. When the group stops overnight at a hotel, Sara witnesses an assault, triggering an intervention to confront the truth of a past overshadowed by violence.

The 90 min debut Hungarian film BLUE HERON by Sophy Romvari is set in 1990s, wherein a Hungarian family relocates to Vancouver Island. Told from the perspective of the youngest sibling, the film explores mental illness, guilt and regret, as one watches Jeremy, the oldest of four children, growing increasingly quiet and distant, and his behaviour becomes erratic and dangerous.

HOW TO DIVORCE DURING THE WAR by Lithuanian filmmaker Andrius Blaževičius is a 108min about a couple – Marija and Vytas – making the difficult decision to separate right before Russia invades Ukraine. Using the nuclear family as a microcosm of conflict, amnesty, and reconciliation, the film explores how ordinary people respond to real-world warfare and navigate the resulting political and emotional minefields.

The 93 min German flick I UNDERSTAND YOUR DISPLEASURE by Kilian Armando Friedrich is about middle-aged Heike with a thankless managerial position at a German cleaning company. Complications arise when she tries poaching one of her subcontractors’ worker and crosses a line with a coworker.

Ecuadorian filmmaker Ana Cristina Barragan’s 99min THE IVY centres around Azucena, gravely ill, attempts to rekindle a relationship with her son, Julio, whom she abandoned after giving birth at the age of 13.

REDOUBT by Sweden’s John Skoog is a 81min film about farmhand Karl-Göran Persson who determines to convert his humble farmhouse into a fortress to protect himself and his neighbours. His efforts are met with contempt by everyone except the children. A captivating portrait of passion and madness, as quiet rumination on existence.

Austrian film ROSE by Markus Schleinzer is a 93min a black-and-white historical drama that takes audiences to 17th C Germany following a soldier concealing his gender in a village post-Thirty Years’ War, succinctly exploring the themes of survival, identity, and patriarchy.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME by South Africa’s director-duo Jason Jacobs & Devon Delmar short 65min feature speaks of a soldier who served during World War II and received nothing in return. The scars of this injustice are still felt in the community, making it vulnerable to a restitution scam that sweeps through the village. A familial docu-drama that takes on a near-spiritual quality as quotidian repetitions unfold.