Two films were withdrawn from an international film festival in Hong Kong after failing to get approval from authorities. According to one director, it would reflect the increase in censorship due to a new law that came into force last year.
The International Short Film Festival fresh wave said in a statement on Tuesday that a Taiwanese film, “Islander,” failed to obtain a certificate of approval from the city’s film censorship authority and would not be shown.
The festival, which started on June 17 and lasts for a month, had already reported that a film from Hong Kong would be withdrawn.
The Hong Kong Film, Newspaper and Articles Management Office said it “would not comment on the application or outcome of individual films.”
Hong Kong passed a censorship law last year to veto films that “endorse, support, glorify, encourage and incite activities that may jeopardize national security.”
“Islander” tells the story of a man who goes to visit his only son, a political prisoner accused of secession and subversion during Taiwan’s authoritarian era before it became a full democracy.
The film’s Taiwanese director Wu Zi-en criticized the decision not to allow it to be shown.
“I think that no matter how the film censorship authority responds later, it’s just a lie if they said it’s not related to the content,” Wu said.
A Hong Kong film “Time, and Time again,” about a detective haunted by the case of a missing girl, also failed to get the green light from film censors, the film’s director said.
The name of the missing girl in the film, Christy, is the same as a girl who disappeared during pro-democracy protests in 2019 and was later found dead at sea. The names are slightly different in Chinese.
“Nobody knows if it’s related to the name Christy,” director Asgard Wong told Reuters by phone from Germany, referring to the failure to get approval. “It’s just everyone’s guess.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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