Boat People (Tau ban no hoi)

Wednesday 29 April at 7.30pm

Ann Hui | Hong Kong | 1982 | 109 mins | TBC

Literally titled ‘Into the Raging Sea’, Boat People recounts the plight of Vietnamese people following the end of the Vietnam War.

“Criticized as sensational and opportunistic when it first premiered at Cannes, Ann Hui’s Boat People is now recognized as a masterpiece of the Hong Kong New Wave. Hui turns her humanist lens on the horrific conditions in postwar Vietnam, which led hundreds of thousands of people to step inside ill-equipped boats to seek safety in the late ’70s. A Japanese photojournalist on assignment to cover Vietnam’s progressive reconstruction discovers the truths of political repression and poverty, becoming entangled in the lives he documents—particularly a 14-year-old girl and her brother—and ultimately must decide to take action… Boat People stands as an important historical document of the Vietnamese diaspora.” – Vinh Nguyen, TIFF Cinematheque

“Boat People is unquestionably one of the most important films in Hong Kong cinema, and yet it’s only with increasing distance that we begin to appreciate how infinitely evocative—as all great art is—this political thriller has managed to be… Irrespective of the political readings it attracted, Boat People remains first and foremost a masterful drama about the survival of people, who may be possessing even less control on their lives than they thought. Its tragic sense of fatalism is haunting.” – Edmund Lee, Time