Film picks: Award winners Old Fox, Stonewalling and Society Of The Snow
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Bai Run-yin (left) and Akio Chen star in Old Fox, which won Chen the Best Supporting Actor prize at the Golden Horse Awards in 2023.
PHOTO: GOLDEN VILLAGE PICTURES
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Old Fox (NC16)
112 minutes, now showing
Hollywood’s awards season may be ongoing, with the Oscars slated for March. But the Golden Horse Awards, known as the Oscars of Chinese-language cinema, wrapped in November 2023.
One of the major winners was Taiwanese film Old Fox, starring child actor Bai Run-yin, veteran Akio Chen and actor Liu Kuan-ting. It won four awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Chen and Best Director for film-maker Hsiao Ya-chuan.
In the family drama set in the late 1980s, young boy Liao Jie (Bai) is raised by his kind and compassionate single father (Liu) after the death of his mother. The two live in a modest rented apartment in a building owned by a wily local businessman nicknamed Old Fox (Chen), but dream of one day owning their home.
When Liao Jie approaches Old Fox to try and convince him to sell his father the apartment, the two end up developing an unlikely friendship and a complicated mentor-mentee bond.
Stonewalling (NC16)
148 minutes, last screening at Asian Film Archive on Feb 4
Chinese actress Yao Honggui plays the protagonist in Stonewalling, a movie about a young woman dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
PHOTO: KIMSTIM
Film buffs should not miss their last chance to catch the newest Best Narrative Feature winner at the Golden Horse Awards.
Stonewalling – a Chinese-language movie helmed by the husband-and-wife team of Japanese director Ryuji Otsuka and Chinese film-maker Huang Ji – won the top prize at the awards ceremony held in November 2023. It also took home the Best Editing award.
While it did not have a wide theatrical release in Singapore, the film has been playing at the Asian Film Archive, with a final screening on Feb 4 at 5pm.
Stonewalling marks the final instalment in the film-making couple’s loose trilogy that shines a light on the plight of young women in China, coming after Egg And Stone (2012) and The Foolish Bird (2017).
In this movie, 20-year-old college student Lynn (Yao Honggui), who aspires to be a flight attendant, finds her life disrupted by an unplanned pregnancy. While her boyfriend wants her to get an abortion, Lynn is reluctant to do so and eventually finds herself exploring a complicated adoption arrangement.
Where: Oldham Theatre, Level 3 National Archives of Singapore, 1 Canning Rise asianfilmarchive.org/event-calendar/stonewalling-2022-3
MRT: City Hall/Clarke Quay/Bras Basah
When: Feb 4, 5pm
Tickets: $10
Info:
Society Of The Snow (M18)
145 minutes, Netflix
Society Of The Snow is based on the real-life tragedy of the Uruguayan Andes flight disaster in 1972.
PHOTO: NETFLIX
Spanish survival thriller Society Of The Snow, which has already won some awards at smaller film festivals in Europe and the United States, is one of the Oscar contenders for Best International Feature.
The film is based on a book of the same name by journalist and writer Pablo Vierci, which documents the accounts of all 16 survivors of the real-life Uruguayan Andes flight disaster in 1972, many of whom Vierci knew from childhood.
The flight, carrying 45 passengers including 19 members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team who were on their way to Chile for a match, crashed in the remote and snowy Andes mountain that year.
The survivors suffered unthinkable hardships in the 72 days they were stranded in the wild, including avalanches, extreme cold and starvation. They had to resort to eating the bodies of the dead to survive.
The film, which stars primarily unknown Uruguayan and Argentine newbie actors, has been praised for being a moving portrait of humanity in the worst of times.
