Description

Official Selection, 2016 Hong Kong International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2016 Udine Far East Film Festival

Childhood friends Lung and Wai are the naughtiest kids in a Shatin school that administrators have already given up on. But when their valiant principal decides to get students on track by starting Hong Kong’s first little league team, Lung and Wai trade water balloons for baseballs and have to choose between being losers for life, or losers who at least could say they went down trying.

A blistering debut feature, WEEDS ON FIRE sets the saga of the real-life Shatin Martens in a penitentiary-like public housing estate, whose hot-blooded teens make the film more Young and Dangerous than Field of Dreams. The sports film staples are all there – training sequences, overcoming self-doubt, the big game – but they’re fueled by a socio-political angst. Set in 1984 around the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the story shows young men seizing one last chance to control their own fates, to out-play pessimism, and to take advantage of the rare opportunity to shed the streets and perform on a world stage.

Led by a cast of relative newcomers, WEEDS ON FIRE pumps populist energy into the new Hong Kong cinema, writing off the doubters the way everyone wrote off the Shatin Martens. The allegory for the Umbrella Movement is made explicit, that the prospect of losing does not mean Hong Kong has lost hope. And with the triumphant idealism of sports, WEEDS ON FIRE wins hearts as only a city losing its identity can: by stealing home. –Brian Hu

Credits

Writer: Chi Fat Chan, Chi Yueng Wong
Starring: Liu Kai-chi, Lam Yiu-sing, Tony Wu Tsz-tung

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