Film Review: Revolution of Our Times

Director: Kiwi Chow
Starring: Gwyneth Ho, Benny Tai
Running time: 152 minutes

A major factor that sets this blistering documentary out from the rest is that director Kiwi Chow is not even able to watch his own work. Chow, who has remained in Hong Kong, is living under the national security law which prevents any public screenings. Despite this, the pro-democracy film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year grossed around $17m NTD (£460,000) in just over a week in Taiwan, as of last month. 

Released in only several countries so far, including the UK, US and Australia, the film is of particular significance in Taiwan where some Taiwanese saw it as a warning for their own future. Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed to achieve the “reunification” of Taiwan with China as China considers democratically ruled Taiwan its own territory, causing concern in Taiwan over its independence. The film has since been screened in over 40 cinemas across Taiwan and has even gained the support of the president, Tsai Ing-wen.

40 years after Beijing Spring, a documentary showcasing another globally recognised stand against China’s authoritarian rule in the form of an unsanctioned public art display in 1979, Revolution of Our Times presents exclusive perspectives of a handful of protesters who were among the millions to take to Hong Kong’s streets in 2019. The protestors include a young volunteer medic, student organisers and an elderly farmer who all fought against a proposed law that would have permitted extraditions to China; an overt alteration of the 1997 “one country, two systems” principle that aids the protection of the territory’s freedoms.

With a true sense of urgency and the occasional scene of violent and bloody police tactics, Chow’s film depicts an epically meaningful resistance to the destruction of liberties. At street-level, the scenes are gripping, from how protestors strategically used the internet to communicate routes of escape, to the companionship between students and slightly older protestors. As well as documenting the months of protests, Chow includes sobering interviews with both well-informed eyewitnesses and his state-targeted subjects, many of which are blurred or hidden to protect their identities.

At the end of the film, we learn that nearly all the subjects interviewed are in exile, which is revealing. Chow even goes further to explain that he has even lost contact with some of them, likely due to them being sent to prison. At 152 minutes, it is long, but as the credits roll with all names disguised, you cannot deny the importance of such a film about the struggle for democracy. 

Did you know? In 2020, Kiwi Chow’s narrative feature film Beyond the Dream, a romance drama from the perspective of a schizophrenia sufferer, became the highest-grossing domestic film in Hong Kong since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Revolution of Our Times is in cinemas now