Presented by The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (Canada)
Mad Fate
Directed by Soi Cheang
Official selection
Berlin International Film Festival 2023
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2023
Udine Far East Film Festival 2023
Director
Soi Cheang
Producer
Johnnie To
Writer
Melvin Li, Yau Nai-Hoi
Cast
Gordon Lam, Lokman Yeung
contact
Golden Scene Company Limited
Can one beat fate at its own game? When a madcap fortune teller named The Master (Gordon Lam) crosses path with “born psychopath” Siu-tong (Lokman Yeung), he foresees the young man is destined to murder. Using every feng shui trick in the book to change fate itself, the unlikely duo begins a peculiar song and dance, engulfing themselves in a world of omens, signs, portents and visions teetering on the edge of complete psychic annihilation at every turn. Meanwhile, a veteran detective is on their trail, convinced to pin a murder, while The Killer is still on the loose — leaving a gruesome trail of bodies for all to get tangled into… a cosmic game of chess pulled by the messy strings of a mad, mad, mad fate.
Premiered at this year’s Berlinale, and chosen as the opening film of the 47th edition of the Hong Kong Film Festival, MAD FATE finds Hong Kong auteur director Soi Cheang (ACCIDENT, MOTORWAY, LIMBO) collaborating once again with Johnnie To and screenwriter Yau Nai-Hoi (of RUNNING ON KARMA, THROW DOWN, BLIND DETECTIVE and countless Milkyway classics). As unclassifiable a genre piece as one has come to expect from these masters working together, even as it weaves familiar elements of the cop procedural and the supernatural comedy, MAD FATE also registers as a uniquely personal, of-the-moment film. On the one hand, it operates as a madcap curio – slapstick even! – while on the other it is a charged and despairing piece flirting with apocalyptic dread; an unnerving vision of a twilight metropolis, engulfed by its own horoscopes. A Hong Kong film about delaying the inevitable. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
Showings
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