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The film festival season has kicked into high gear since February, with events lighting up screens from Hong Kong to Berlin. To give readers front-row access to the world’s most prestigious cinematic gatherings, we’ve enlisted critic Patrick Suen to deliver a first-hand dispatch from the 75th Berlinale. Dive into his immersive report on festival trends, hot-off-the-press award winners, and global industry highlights.
All eyes were on the Berlinale’s buzzy world premiere of Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s enigmatic sci-fi opus starring Robert Pattinson. Ahead of its theatrical debut, MMM scored exclusive interview with the Oscar-winning director and leading man, who unpacked the film’s existential themes and production secrets. Marking a major coup, we’re proud to announce that MMM is the only Hong Kong print publication featuring this conversation!
Bong describes Mickey 17 as his first true coming-ofage narrative, weaving dark humor with meditations on mortality and human fragility. This existential dread dovetails perfectly with our May collaboration with MOViE MOViE Channel, where we explore “The Cursed Audience” across cinema. Multi-hyphenate visionary Juno Mak weighs in through our Life Behind Movies column, dissecting horror’s cultural resonance and its role in his own cinematic philosophy.
You thought back-to-back Worlds Championships would validate your place in the starting position, yet if there is one thing to learn from this, it is that doubters will always find a reason to question, but that’s alright. You have done enough and proven yourself to those who believe in you.
I will now seize this opportunity, this small space on the page, to make a wish of mine: I wish for the full recovery of Victor Wembanyama and Gregg Popovich. Thank you.
If you think about musicians, they maintain the same voice colour and voice tone. They have their own unique way of singing. And that's why people listen to their music, because they want to hear what they know from that musician. I feel like the relationship I have with my audience is pretty similar. There are themes that repeat throughout my films. Also, I have this ambitious desire to become a genre unto myself. At the same time, I always try to do something new, because it would be meaningless to put out a work without doing anything new. So the new challenge with this project was the character of Mickey, because he's such a unique and strange character that we haven't seen before. He's a working-class guy in miserable circumstances. And he's sort of the antithesis of a hero. He has zero self-esteem and at times looks a bit dumb. But the important thing about this character is that he's actually not that dumb. He just believes that he is dumb.
And then you have the mutant iteration of Mickey, Mickey 18, who comes out of nowhere, destroys everything, but ends up helping 17 realize something new about himself. It's like a mutant of yourself appearing in your life to teach you something about yourself. And in that sense, it's a coming-of-age film where this character grows. And I've never done a coming-ofage film before. So, I think that was a new journey for me.
What was the biggest challenge of making Mickey, and what's your favourite part of him?
I think that there's a sort of central part to his character, which is the extremity he has to go through. You're essentially being tortured almost all the time with no reward at all and no respect. You're tortured and then people say, you're still worthless after being tortured. And there is something in Mickey's character where he just doesn't seem to hear people saying he’s worthless all the time. That’s an interesting character trait that’s hard to understand. You would think that at a certain point, you would go insane or you would just shut down. But Mickey's like, “Okay, I'm just turning up for work.”
And it's just an interesting, unique character. It reminded me of a cartoon character or something, where you just continuously go into this and have the same day and expect a different result or don't even have any idea what the result's going to be. Just trying to ground that and make it into something believable was probably the most challenging part, but also the most fun part.
Why not seven, but 17 in terms of Mickey?
I think everyone is fascinated by creatures and monsters because they provide this morbid joy. We're looking at creatures that are different from us; kind of disgusting, kind of frightening. But what's important is that there's always this moment where you get to peel off those layers and discover that they're actually more human than us and actually quite similar to us. I think those moments where you get to realize that are really fascinating.
And with the “Creepers," I wanted to deal with creatures in an even deeper way compared to Okja and The Host. In terms of why I changed "Seven" to "Seventeen" is, I just wanted him to die a bit more. Because he has an extreme job, and a job means that you clock into work every day and you go through the same thing, the same repetitions every day. That's why I wanted to increase the number of deaths.
Also, Mickey 17 is a coming-of-age story where you see Mickey grow and mature and realize something new about himself. And when you think about the number 18, in most societies, when you turn 18, you become an adult. So it's a story about Mickey really crossing that line into maturity and that's why I chose 17 and 18 rather than 12 or 47 or any of those other numbers.
Has the process of making Mickey17 changed both of your outlooks on death?
It's always frightening to think about death despite how inevitable it is. We will go through it at one point and no one can escape it. But to think about it is quite frightening. I would avoid thinking about it and just focus on my day-to-day, despite the fact that I have addressed the topic in many of my films.
However, this film really brings death to the forefront, so I thought this would be my chance to think about death. Honestly, when I was writing it and thinking about Mickey's circumstances, I ended up thinking more about what it would be like to ruminate on my own death. What would it be like to go back in time and think about what it was like to die? And how would I describe that? Because that's what Mickey has to do. In the past, I stopped just before asking and thinking about death. With this film, I thought about what it's like to recollect death.
The most interesting thing for me with Mickey was the nature of what you're made out of. Because all the other characters are constantly asking, “What does it feel like?” They're asking him what it's like to die, but they're basically asking, what does it mean to be alive?
When someone tells you you're not you anymore, and you're made out of chicken bones, trash, dead bodies and human excrement, it sounds awful, but then he just accepts it. Yes, you are made out of that. Everyone is made out of that. Strangely, for a simple character, Mickey has quite a profound understanding of what it means to be alive. You have a day, you die, you get pumped out of a printer, and you start all over again – that's life.
From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, Mickey 17. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.
Written and directed by Bong Joon Ho, Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson (The Batman, Tenet), Naomi Ackie (Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker), Steven Yeun (Nope), with Academy Award nominees Toni Collette (Hereditary), and Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things).
The world seems to be coming to an end, teeming with the vestiges of a human presence. Cat is a solitary animal, but as his home is devastated by a great flood, he finds refuge on a boat populated by various species, and will have to team up with them despite their differences. In the lonesome boat sailing through mystical overflowed landscapes, they navigate the challenges and dangers of adapting to this new world.
Award-winning filmmaker Payal Kapadia (A Night of Knowing Nothing) received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for her stunning drama feature debut, a glowing portrayal of urban connection and unexpected sisterhood in Mumbai. Nurse Prabha’s routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest. Named the best film of the year by The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, Sight and Sound and more, this film depicts the struggles and resilience of women with lyrical grace, subtly and powerfully shining a light on the shared realities of modern India.
I am from Mumbai. I didn’t always grow up here but it’s the city that I am the most familiar with. Mumbai is quite cosmopolitan. People from all over the country come here to work. It is multicultural and diverse in that sense. It’s also a place where it’s a little bit easier for women to work as compared to many other places in the country. I wanted to make a film about women who leave their homes to go to work somewhere else. Mumbai was the right setting for it. Another aspect of the city that interested me is how much it is in a state of flux. Parts of Mumbai are changing quickly as there is a real estate boom. Builders keep grabbing areas where people have lived for years. Not everyone always has the right documentation to prove they have lived there which makes it easier for those who have the means to stake claim to the land.
Although All We Imagine as Light is my first fiction feature, it’s still very important to me that fiction and documentary can exist together. What I try do is to approach fiction in a non-fiction way. I find the juxtaposition of the two very interesting and I strongly believe that it makes the nonfiction more fiction and the fiction more non-fiction.
Drawing from her own background as a competitive fencer, Nelicia Low makes a stunning feature directorial debut with this drama set in the world of fencing. Young fencer Zijie finds his world upended when his older brother, three-time national fencing champion Zihan, is released from juvenile prison. Zihan was incarcerated for what he maintains was the accidental death of an opponent. Zijie wants some connection (and fencing tips) from his enigmatic older brother, but their mother is convinced of Zihan’s malevolence and seeks to end their brotherly bond. Featuring meticulously staged fencing matches and pitch-perfect performances, this unnerving psychodrama announces Nelicia Low as a future talent to follow.
While I was in Taipei shooting a short film in 2014, a young man caused a nationwide tragedy when he stabbed multiple people on the Taipei subway. While the man’s parents publicly denounced their son, his younger brother stood by him, in complete denial of what his older brother did. His younger brother’s reaction made me wonder about my own relationship with my autistic brother; When I was young, not understanding my brother’s condition, I idealized him to be a loving, caring older brother. It was only when I grew up that I realized our relationship was made up in my head. This inspired me to write Pierce. I love my brother deeply but will never know if he feels the same way about me. Accepting this has been a painful journey, and is the same one Zijie takes in Pierce. The question I ponder both in the film and in real life is this: How does one’s feelings of love and loyalty change when one knows the truth? Does the truth really matter?
Black Box Diaries follows director and journalist Shiori Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional firstperson video, Shiori's quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems.
鄰 50》（Bad Neighbours）等瘋狂喜劇 。在 Mary Bronstein 執導 的《If I Had Legs I'd Kick You》中 ，她飾演的心理醫生 Linda 能 醫不自醫 ，面對工作壓力之餘還要回家湊女 ，老公長期出差在 外 ，再加上住所天花板突然崩塌漏水 ，名副其實屋漏兼逢連夜
雨 ，everything everywhere all at once。電影刻意不讓主角女兒 出鏡 ，只聞其聲 ，讓觀眾更能投入 Linda 的視點 ，感受她那有如 山洪暴發般的壓力 。
For best friends Becky and Hunter, life is all about conquering fears and pushing limits. But after they climb 2,000 feet to the top of a remote, abandoned radio tower, they find themselves stranded with no way down. Now, Becky and Hunter’s expert climbing skills will be put to the ultimate test as they desperately fight to survive the elements, a lack of supplies and vertigo-inducing heights in this adrenaline-fueled thriller.
Liam Neeson has defied Hollywood's conventions for action heroes as the Irish actor's career took an unexpected turn in starring Taken, portraying a retired special agent who tries to rescue his daughter, and made the iconic line "I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you" peaked his career as the king of middle age action star.
Trained in boxing at a young age, Neeson began his career in the Shakespearean stages and then starred in Star Wars and Batman: Rogue One. The early experiences later led him to the action genre like Non-Stop and The A-Team. At the age of 72, he reinvented himself again in Memory as an assassin battling dementia, juxtaposing physical intensity with psychological fragility. More recent roles like Honest Thief's master thief, with multiple identities, show his chameleonic range, demonstrating that his authentic charm in acting is never limited by age or type. HONEST THIEF 《末路狂盜》
John “Aristotle” Knox is a contract killer who only kills bad people, the ones who deserve it: imps, rapists, other murderers. Knox and his partner Muncie, are planning their next hit when Knox learns that his recent bouts of forgetfulness are caused by a rare disorder that’s similar to Alzheimer’s, but with a much faster rate of progression. Within just a few weeks, Knox will have no memory at all. He’ll be gone. Until then, it will get steadily worse. Stoically, Knox thinks about getting his affairs in order and moves ahead with Muncie on the hit, realizing ruefully it will be his last.
Kevin Ma is a writer and English subtitler in the film industry, and the Hong Kong Consultant for Italy’s Udine Far East Film Festival. He was an English Editor at YesAsia. com and the Entertainment Editor of Cathay Pacific’s inflight magazine. He has contributed to publications by the Asian Film Awards. South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, Poland’s Five Flavours Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and the Hong Kong Film Archive.
As someone who doesn’t enjoy the anxiety of watching a horror film, I do sometimes wonder why there are people who enjoy being frightened or seeing gore on screen. Is it because horror films offer the safest way of inducing adrenaline that comes from feeling endangered? Is it because they tap into our curiosity for the morbid or our most primitive desires? Or is it because horror offers a different way to convey real-life fears? As this month’s selections prove, horror doesn’t simply cover monsters or serial killers. In fact, fear comes in all shapes and sizes.
For ages, there have been superstitions surrounding the act of photo taking – some indigenous cultures believe that it steals the soul, for one – and there have been decades of memes showing supernatural apparitions captured on camera. Directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom play into that fear with their 2004 Thai horror blockbuster Shutter. Following the haunting experienced by a photographer and his girlfriend after they run over a girl on the road, the film creates plenty of effective scares by exploiting its urban folklore premise and our long-standing fear of long-haired female ghosts, but it also cleverly ties everything back together with a nasty backstory. Not only is Shutter often credited as the blockbuster that put Thai horror on the global map, its universal appeal is proven by multiple remakes around the world, including a Hollywood remake in 2008.
As modern self-referential horror films like Scream have pointed out, horror films are actually often morality tales that illustrate the idiom “mess around and find out,” punishing victims who commit some kind of sin or defy social mores, whether it’s promiscuity (see Friday the 13th or other slasher films) or unwisely testing the supernatural (see Flatliners). Australian content creators and brothers Danny and Michael Philippou update the Flatliners formula in their terrifying breakout hit Talk to Me. While Flatliners shows a group of medical students losing their heads
over near-death experiences, Talk to Me shows a group of teenagers going too far when they use an embalmed hand to let spirits possess them. In the tradition of modern “elevated horror”, the film is more than just about messing with paranormal possessions; it’s also a lesson about processing devastating grief and the extremes that teenagers go to chase adrenaline highs.
Other horror films play on our spirituality by invoking religious lore, such is the case of Immaculate. A passion project of up-and-coming Hollywood star Sydney Sweeney, the film follows an American Catholic nun who is brought to a remote Italian convent and experiences a traumatic event that forces her to unleash her animalistic and feminist rage. With a wickedly creepy atmosphere skillfully crafted by director Michael Moran and a no-holds-barred performance by Sweeney, the film deftly keeps audiences guessing whether the horrors they are seeing is of supernatural or occult origins. It all culminates in a final shot that is both liberating and chilling.
Meanwhile, some horror films can send chills up your spine without a single jump scare or shot of violence. After Jessica Hausner made us see plants a whole new way in psychological horror Little Joe, she takes aim at a more modern enemy in Club Zero. Mia Wasikowska stars as Miss Novak, a teacher at an elite boarding school who teaches “conscious eating.” Mixing anti-capitalist ideologies with trendy and scientifically unproven buzz-word diets, Novak – who doesn’t carry any actual medical qualification to prove her agendas – convinces five of her students to pursue “Club Zero,” which involves permanent fasting to disrupt modern capitalism. Satirizing our obsession with finding the next fast-track diet, cult of personality and information that “feels” right, Club Zero is eerily relevant in an era when even adults become susceptible to political misinformation and anti-vaccine propaganda that are pushed by charismatic peddlers and passed using peer pressure. It is truly a horror film for our times.
THE FACES OF HORROR
KeVin
SHUTTER
SHUTTER (DIGITALLY RESTORED)
《鬼影》 (全新數碼修復)
導演 directOr
班莊比辛達拿剛 banJOng PisanthanaKun
柏德潘王般 ParKPOOM WOngPOOM
演員 cast
阿蘭達艾華靈咸 ananda eVeringhaM
娜特慧蘭他美 natthaWeeranuch thOngMee
CHANNEL PREMIERE 獨家首播
04/05 (SUN) 22:00
05/05 (MON) 24:00
Shutter, a chilling horror story about a 25 year old photographer and the sin that haunts his group of friends in the form of mysterious aberrations that ruin all their developed photos.
As they investigate what could cause such photographic anomalies, each piece of the puzzle unearthed, strangely coincides with the tragic death of one of the members of the group. Time is running out and if you dare, you can follow along as they uncover the mystery of why they are plagued by this malevolent force. But be-careful! In The end, don’t be surprised if YOU, are the only one left to bare witness to what causes that scary feeling which makes all of us look over our shoulders!
There is a story behind every photograph, but this one is DYING to get out!
Cecilia, an American nun of devout faith, embarks on a new journey in a remote convent in the picturesque Italian countryside. Cecilia’s warm welcome quickly devolves into a nightmare as it becomes clear her new home harbours sinister secrets and unspeakable horrors.
When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and opens the door to the spirit world, forcing them to choose who to trust: the dead or the living.
At an international boarding school, Miss Novak joins the teaching staff to instruct a new class on "conscious eating." Her impressionable teenage students each have their own reasons for joining the class — to improve fitness, reduce their carbon footprint, or get extra credit. Although early lectures focus on mindful consumption, Miss Novak's discussions soon become increasingly disordered and extreme. A suspicious headmistress, concerned parents and the failing health of her students lead everyone to question the inscrutable Miss Novak's motivations for teaching the class.
In 2018, Hirokazu Koreeda’s family drama Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or. 4 years later, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car earned multiple nominations, and even won the award for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. These two recent milestones of Japanese cinema have been viewed as a portent for a resurgence of what has been seen as an insular industry, but beside the sphere of the festivals and awards, the weight we prescribe to acclaim and obscurity sheds itself. Furthermore, in its outlying acclaim, many may seek a similarity between the two films and filmmakers for the plain fact that they are both Japanese, that they both present a tranquil, detached “Japanese-ness” that appeals to an inveterate tradition to fetishize the other. It’s not too tall a task to draw comparison between the two filmmakers: a common belief in the everyday as our transformative unit of life underlies their work. However, beyond Koreeda and Hamaguchi’s shared display of unhistrionic eloquence, the features that have uniquely defined their accomplished works defy attempts of easy categorization.
Hirokazu Koreeda, in his long prolific career, has often been associated with the word “humanist”. Though the term can be vague and reductive, it accurately speaks to his preoccupation with the floridly rich tapestry that make up our society, and his indiscriminate eye and desire to unearth a universality within these people. Before his career in narrative filmmaking, Koreeda got his start in TV documentaries. His last and possibly most notable documentary, August Without Him, follows the first man in Japan to publicly acknowledge to have contracted HIV through homosexual intercourse. Even at an early stage in his career, one can already identify his empathic eye – the gentle correspondence between camera and subject that somehow avoids maudlin sentiments, the trivial matters of the everyday that concretize the underlying social matters at large – that would feature in Shoplifters and Broker, two touching, open-hearted explorations of the question of family, individuals in broken systems and extraordinary circumstances rendered in modest moments of tender connection.
Hirokazu
Ever since Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2008 feature debut Passion, his films have always been concerned with the entanglements between young Japanese creatives and academics, up until Evil Does Not Exist, which in more than one way is a radical departure of Hamaguchi’s previous works. Compared to Koreeda, Hamaguchi’s touch is more oblique and piercing; his tranquility feels more accosting, the camera often a catalyst for the character’s revelations. A pivotal scene in Drive My Car sees two characters at the back seat of a car, in conversation. Hamaguchi places the camera in between the two, alternating between shots directly facing each character. The scene plays out in the cadence of a confessional, an anecdotal conversation turned dangerously revealing – in its character’s inexplicable contradictions and truths. This is telling of the credo behind Hamaguchi’s work: he values the space of the quotidian, not necessarily as a venue for humanization such as with Koreeda, but as a stage for the characters/ actors to roam, prime to explore the inexpressible, through art and language, in hopes of uncovering tender reserves of feeling and truth. It's unfortunately easy to paint with a broad brush, but even in a brief and shallow peek into two leading faces of Japanese cinema leaves one with nuanced incongruence, in defiance to classification that seeks to skim past engagement with what forms the essential core of their own personal cinema. To succinctly encapsulate Koreeda and Hamaguchi is futile; like all great filmmakers, they’ve left it in their films. 是枝裕和
