Hong Kong is queer, too!

This year’s Slovak Queer Film Festival is delivering a quintet of Hong Kong pictures that shatter societal taboos, breaking some hearts in the process. Give in to irresistible queer classics, notorious provocateurs and an unconventional romantic comedy. Hong Kong may be one of the most conservative countries out there, but its filmmakers are among the world’s bravest. Audiences will even get the chance to discuss all this with both the Queer Hong Kong section programmer and special guest Jacqueline Liu, a Hong Kong producer.

On 22 November, the section will kick things off will a queer classic, a romance from master of the form Wong Kar-Wai: Happy Together (2000), in which the delicately beautiful Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung play two lovers from Hong Kong searching for happiness in Argentina, in hopes that tango and Iguazú Falls will cure them of all their problems. What’s more, don’t miss the legendary, still-unsurpassed lesbian film Butterfly from director Yan Yan Mak, whose heroine Flavia falls in love not once, but twice: first with a female classmate while the Tiananmen Square protests are crushed by the Chinese military, then as an adult with a charming songstress. In their portrayal of intimacy, both of these films show more bravery than other films, not only among their contemporaries, but even among their successors.

Jun Li’s Tracey continues in the tradition of family secrets, this time concerning the sexual identity of Tai-hung, who finds himself unable to cope with leading the double life of a husband and father with the yearning to be a woman. The film joins gangster-film legend Philip Keung with icon of kung-fu and wuxia cinema Kara Wai. Add a touch of lightness to your filmgoing schedule with Gilitte Leung’s Love Me Not, which considers the bond between the gay Dennis and the lesbian Aggie: is it friendship or romance? And on the opposite end on the spectrum, we have the devastatingly beautiful 30 Years of Adonis from the enfant terrible and cynical provocateur Scud. Examining the desire for professional and emotional fulfilment as well as the meaning of life and death, the film features the most drop-dead gorgeous cast you’ve ever seen.

Love, desire, broken hearts and all sorts of other emotions from Hong Kong cinema are brought to you at the 2023 Slovak Queer Film Festival thanks to the financial support of the HK ETO in Berlin.