Warning: The following contains spoilers for PROJECT WOLF HUNTING (2022) and HUNT (2022). Over the course of HIFF42, I watched two South Korean films that were centered around and saturated with brutal violence: one considered it a spectacle, something that it assumed the audience wanted to see, and something that could easily be assigned moral […]
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GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD screened at the 42nd Hawai‘i International Film Festival presented by Halekulani When regarding the art and ingredients of making a gangster film, Quentin Tarantino stated, “a good, pulpy story or you need an aspect of criminality that you want to put under a microscope.” He also added that a satirical subtext is
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Absurd and thoroughly enjoyable, it is only fitting to feature Amartya Bhattacharyya’s ADIEU GODARD as our October HIFF SELECTS film in honor of the French auteur’s recent passing. Back to absurdity, here is the premise for the film: An old porn-addict accidentally brings home a DVD of a Godard film, and falls in love with
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A New York Times “Noteworthy Film of the Summer,” September’s HIFF SELECTS is for all the dog lovers out there in an incredible true story of resilience, determination and lots of elbow grease. FREE PUPPIES! Chronicles this incredible story–When Hurricane Katrina left more than 250,000 pets stranded, the infrastructure of modern pet transport for a
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Following a streak of commercial hit films in his native South Korea, director CHOI Dong-hoon (THE THIEVES being one of his most prominent, which HIFF’s Closing Night in 2012) enters the echelon of big budget sci-fi extravaganzas with ALIENOID, the first of two planned films (part 2 comes out early next year). ALIENOID is a
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Panah Panahi, son of the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi, forever embattled with the government and currently under house arrest, makes a striking feature debut with this charming and deeply moving road movie. HIT THE ROAD expands on the genre, following a family of four–two middle-aged parents and their sons, one a taciturn adult, the
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A visual and aural feast, NEPTUNE FROST is an Afro-Futurist musical that is a cry for liberation through technology. The best science fiction is allegorical to the societal climate of its times, but it is also done so through a white male gaze. From EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE to the exemplary works of Octavia
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As of May 2022, GIRL, INTERRUPTED is streaming on NETFLIX and PlutoTV. Upon first look, GIRL, INTERRUPTED (1999) appears to be the sister film of the critically acclaimed ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975). The way Lisa (Angelina Jolie) enters the ward, kicking and screaming, marks her as GIRL, INTERRUPTED’s McMurphy and the force
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DONBASS, an absurd, political satire that takes place during the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Eastern European region actually was released stateside in 2019 (after its debut at Cannes 2018). Watching it now as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unspooling on our TV screens on a daily basis, lends an unnerving, heightened resonance
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WATCH A TALE OF LOVE AND DESIRE ON HIFF SELECTS DURING THE MONTH OF MARCH Lust is always a major factor in the typical coming-of-age story. It’s a tired trope that always falls into the usual cliches. Been there, done that. But rarely are they outlined with the same sincerity and sweetness as in
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With aloha, HIFF acknowledges its occupation of ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Indigenous Hawaiian people, the Kānaka Maoli.
With gratitude, we honor the ʻāina itself and the generations who steward it.
