Hong Kong – “Ten Years’’, a film portraying a dystonia future under Chinese Communist Party rule, has won one of Asia’s top film awards.
It won the Best Picture award at the Hong Kong film awards that recognizes film excellence across Asia.
“Ten Years’’, a feature-length film comprising five short vignettes depicting a dark vision of the city in 2025 is a surprise hit.
It strikes a public chord nearly 16 months after tens of thousands blocked roads across the city.
The road-block was part of an “Occupy Central’’ civil disobedience movement to demand China’s leaders allow full democracy in 2017.
Chow Kwun-Wai, one of the five directors who worked on the film said, “Ten Years exposed the fear of Hong Kong people towards China.
“Ten Years also provided Hong Kong people and us a chance to show that we have no fear’’, he said.
People across Hong Kong, which reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, have in recent months thronged to cinemas and open-air screenings to watch the controversial movie.
Scenes in the film include those of an old woman setting herself alight before Hong Kong’s British Consulate.
Hong Kong kids dressed in military uniforms policing adults in scenes echoing child “Red Guards’’ from China’s fraught 1966-76 Cultural Revolution were also in the film.
The scenes underscore tension simmering between mainland China and Hong Kong, that have resulted in a recent riot and growing grassroots calls by radical protests for greater autonomy and even independence from China.
Earlier China’s state-controlled Global Times denounced the film in a January editorial as absurd and pessimistic and said it was a “thought virus’’.
Soon after, screenings of the film stopped in Hong Kong cinemas. Cinema operators told the film-makers they could no longer show it because of scheduling issues. (Reuters/NAN)