Johnnie To-produced Trivisa and Yang Qing’s Chongqing Hotpot will open this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (March 21-April 4), while Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy will close the event. 

Chongqing Hotpot, which receives its world premiere at HKIFF, follows three high school classmates who open a hotpot restaurant and their adventures when the business fails.

Trivisa, which recently premiered at the Berlin film festival, is a gangster tale co-directed by Johnnie To proteges Frank Hui, Vicky Wong and Jevons Au. Kurosawa’s thriller Creepy, starring Hidetoshi Nishijima as a dectective investigating his neighbour, also premiered in Berlin.

In total, the festival will screen 240 titles including 63 world, international and Asian premieres. Highlights include a retrospective of Wong Kar Wai’s Jet Tone Films, celebrating the company’s 25th anniversary, and a spotlight on Korean cinema which will screen Kwon Oh-kwang’s Collective Invention, E J-yong’s The Bacchus Lady, Im Kwon-taek’s 1987 The Surrogate Woman and Woo Min-ho’s Inside Men.

Audrey Estrougo’s Jailbirds will be screened at French Night, while Yang Chao’s Crosscurrent, which recently won best cinematography in Berlin, will screen at the Awards Gala.

Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr will lead a master class following the screening of his 2011 The Turin Horse. Other filmmakers who will be town to present their films include Kurosawa (Creepy), Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang (Afternoon); Japan’s Sion Sono (Shinjuku Swan, The Whispering Star) and French-Canadian auteur Denis Côté (Boris Without Béatrice).

HKIFF will also present the word premiere of the latest omnibus film in the Beautiful series, Beautiful 2016, which comprises short films from China’s Jia Zhangke, Japan’s Hideo Nakata, Taiwan’s Alec Su and Hong Kong’s Stanley Kwan

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