Blue Island

Director: Chan Tze-woon

2022 / 97min / DCP

Chan’s second feature uses elements of documentary and fictional reconstruction—including visions of the possible future—to describe the Hong Kong of today and tomorrow, a city that’s been wracked by protests against the fading of the autonomy promised by the Two Systems, One Country deal struck with its 1997 Handover to the People’s Republic of China. A sui generis, boots-on-the-ground portrait of the city and its disillusioned-but-unbowed people, in which contemporary student protestors recreate the struggles of another generation, including the citywide strikes of 1967, suggesting not only the cyclical nature of history but the long deferral of revolutionary change.