22nd New York Asian Film Festival

Jul 14-30, 2023

Photo: © MakerVille Company Limited and Noble Castle Asia Limited

North American Premiere

Mad Fate

命案

Soi Cheang's frenzied follow-up to the stylish, ultraviolent crime drama Limbo, Mad Fate carries in its DNA the legacy of old-school Hong Kong genre stylists, from Ringo Lam to Johnnie To, who serves as producer on the film. Hitting the ground running with a fake burial ceremony, the film follows the misfortunes and entanglements of an eccentric fortune teller (simply called “The Master”) with a psychopathic, cat-killing delivery boy (Lokman Yeung), possessed with an irrepressible urge for homicide. The plot soon thickens and darkens as sharp tools are put to macabre use and the Master frantically tries to reprogram the young man’s predicted path (upon which he is meant to graduate from sadistic voyeurism to murder most foul) while struggling to maintain his own sanity. Set in a surreal city of hookers, mystics, and psychopaths, Mad Fate is a crazed, morally complex addition to classic Cantonese mean-streets noir.

Director: Soi Cheang
Cast: Gordon Lam Ka Tung, Lokman Yeung, Berg Ng
Languages: Cantonese with English Subtitles
2023; 108 min.

SCHEDULE:

Saturday July 22, 2:15pm
Film at Lincoln Center