The screening on 19 April will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director Ann Hui, moderated by Tony Rayns.
Following her 'Vietnamese Trilogy', one of the cornerstones of the Hong Kong New Wave, Ann Hui took her career in a different direction, and began adapting literary works. The first of these was Love in a Fallen City, based on the novella by Eileen Chang, whose writing Hui had long admired and wished to bring to the screen, followed by Eighteen Springs (1997) and Love After Love (2017).
Beginning in Shanghai during the 1940s with the Japanese invasion looming, the film stars Cora Miao as a divorcee who falls for businessman Chow Yun-Fat and follows him to Hong Kong, where they repeatedly separate and get back together against the tense backdrop of the Pacific War. A grounded and movingly humanistic exploration of relationships and the desolation of war, the film saw Hui widening her scope and developing her creative approach and voice as director, while attempting to remain as faithful as possible to Chang’s text.
This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.
