Jonas Bak’s quick debut characteristic, a few retired German mom who follows her son to Hong Kong, lingers on the checkpoint between fiction and documentary. Powerfully composed and comprised largely of characters monologuing over illustrative pictures, it has the contemplative authority of non-fiction. However it's, nonetheless, nonetheless fiction, one which units its slender story in opposition to a backdrop of fleeting time at first intimately evoked however which grows into one thing epic and nearly elegant.
The widowed mom (Anke Bak, the director’s personal guardian), pixie-cutted and subdued, takes members of the family, together with her daughter (Theresa Bak), to her previous home on the Baltic sea. There, the previous is as seen because the marine horizon, however unreachable; one absentee is her son, Max, who has been working in Hong Kong. Newly retired from her job in a church, the mom decides to go east to affix him – solely it seems he's away on a enterprise journey and reluctant to return whereas the town is in turmoil due to the Umbrella protests. So she is left to fend for herself.
Bak broadcasts his mom’s entry into the metropolis with a very magnificent, upwards-peering lengthy shot of neon-washed edifices. Filming in 2019 whereas the protest motion was in full swing, he additionally contains vertical panoramas by which historical past appears to be submitting down the boulevards. However a sequence of likelihood encounters – a too-tired-to-sleep hostelmate (Alexandra Batten), Max’s affable doorman (Patrick Lo), an artwork trainer turned activist (Ricky Yeung) additionally lacking his little one – emphasise the fragility and the persistence of particular person lives within the face of bigger forces.
A fortune teller (Edward Chan) ideas her off that water is her component, however she should dwell near a forest to compensate for the lacking solidity in her life: her youngsters. She usually stares into area out of her phantom son’s condominium window; the immensity of life appears able to swallow her up. Etched rigorously by Bak’s minimalism and naturalism, each a cool philosophical detachment and a generosity of spirit are in fruitful opposition right here.
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