As he unveiled the trailer for his new film “Deadline” (自殺通告), scheduled to debut in Taiwan on November 7, Hong Kong filmmaker Kiwi Chow (周冠威) told the independent Hong Kong outlet Inmedia HK that he felt uncertain the film would receive local approval for screening in his hometown. Chow said he had received only “processing” updates since submitting the student suicide drama to Hong Kong’s Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration last month. Starring Anthony Wong Chau-sang (黃秋生) and shot entirely in Taiwan, the film marks the director’s first Taiwan production following his locally unreleased documentary “Revolution of Our Times” (時代革命), which included footage of frontline protests in Hong Kong and infuriated Chinese authorities — particularly when it won best documentary at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards. “Am I optimistic? Haha, it’s hard to say,” Chow told Inmedia HK. “I choose to be optimistic.”
The trailer for “Deadline,” Kiki Chow’s latest film.
A documentary about a prominent Hong Kong journalist has been pulled from an international film festival, offering a stark reminder of the territory’s constricting space for artistic expression. “A Single Spark A Little Blaze” (星星之火・不可燎原), featuring former Journalists Association chairman Ronson Chan (陳朗昇), was withdrawn from all screenings of the inaugural Ying E Chi Independent Short Film Award after “interviewees faced pressure,” organizers announced Tuesday.
“We remain in Hong Kong. If trouble comes, it could destroy families and separate loved ones,” Mr. Chan told Photon Media (光傳媒), a Hong Kong exile media outlet, explaining his reluctance to detail specific threats. The film was among 12 finalists selected from 165 global submissions by Hong Kong filmmakers. Vincent Chui (崔允信), former artistic director of Ying E Chi (影意志), expressed deep disappointment but maintained optimism that the work would eventually be shown in Hong Kong. “I’ve always believed that day will come,” he was quoted as saying in Chaser News, another exile outlet.
Chui’s organization, which relocated to Taiwan after disbanding in Hong Kong last October, still plans to hold screenings in Taiwan, the United States, Canada and Britain next month.
Screenshot of coverage of the film story by The Chaser.
When the United States and China reached a temporary agreement to lower tariffs by 115 percentage points this week, China’s state broadcaster CCTV appeared ready to mark the diplomatic thaw. The network’s film channel CCTV-6 (nicknamed “Princess Six” (六公主) by Chinese viewers) had originally scheduled the anthology film New York, I Love You for Monday evening, according to screenshots of the program guide shared by the official Weibo account of “Changjiang Cloud” (長江雲), an outlet under the state-run Hubei Television.
Hong Kong Economic Times coverage of the television schedule switch in China, with inset poster of “New York, I Love You.”
The scheduling choice quickly sparked a trending topic on Weibo, with some commenters noting the contrast to 2019, when the channel aired films like Battle of Triangle Hill, a nationalistic 1956 propaganda classic on volunteer Chinese soldiers fighting the US during the Korean War, in the midst of heightened trade tensions. “I thought we’d be watching Shangganling for a while, didn’t expect we’d already be watching New York, I Love You,” one internet user remarked. CCTV-6 has a well-documented history of using film selections as political signals.
The celebration of warming relations was short-lived, however. By noon, the Hubei Daily (湖北日報), a provincial-level CCP-run newspaper, reported that the channel had revised its schedule, replacing the New York-themed film with the Italian comedy Welcome to the South (later reports indicated it was changed toCamille). The Weibo hashtag “Six Princess schedules New York, I Love You” (六公主排片紐約我愛你) was subsequently censored, disappearing from the platform’s trending topics. While some entertainment-related individual posts using the hashtag could be located on Weibo, clicking on the hashtag for the main related page yielded the message: “Sorry, the content of this topic is not displayed, below are search word results” (抱歉，该话题内容未予显示，以下为搜索词结果). Ironically, as UDN (聯合報) noted, New York, I Love You actually opens with a short film directed by renowned Chinese filmmaker Jiang Wen and starring American actress Natalie Portman—a perfect symbol of “China-US cooperation.”
A hashtag related to “New York, I Love You” yields a message that the topic cannot be displayed.
