Ashes In The Snow

Hae-su works at a factory on the outskirts of Seoul. Returning home from work, she makes a phone call that goes to voicemail; nearing her residence, another phone call comes in, but she doesn't pick up. Inside the house is her mother's body—she died from mysterious circumstances. A knock on the door goes unanswered, but when a plainclothes police officer arrives, Hae-su lets him in. An exchange of documents, uncertain glances. With Hae-su and her tempermental brother the only attendants at her mother's funeral, there are more questions than answers.

Elderly Dastaguir and his newly deaf 5-year-old grandson Yassin hitchhike and walk, but mostly walk, as they make their way to the coal mine where Dastaguir's son Murad works. Dastaguir must tell Murad that the rest of their family were all killed in a recent bomb attack.

Po-Chih Leong's debut film was a trendsetter in Hong Kong cinema. Shot from the shoulder, the fast-moving world of cops, informers, drug dealers and other crooks are evoked in a very lively and realistic way. The action all takes place in carefully selected locations, among them the walled city of Kowloon and Yuen Long. The film looks like a documentary and evokes the kind of excitement usually seen in news programmes. The story focuses on the battle between two gangs and starts in Amsterdam, where one of the gang leaders is murdered.

During another routine day at the farm, a chicken refuses to part with her egg. The supervising rooster resolves the issue in one shot. The other chickens furiously escape with their eggs, but freedom is a luxury.

In the ensuing days before his wedding bridegroom Hachemi faces both the anxieties of the future and the shadows of the past. His best friend, Farfat, is the topic of street graffiti and local gossip, which calls his manhood into question. This ripples out to affect Hachemi for, unbeknownst to anyone, as apprenticed youths they were molested by Ameur, the local carpenter. Farfat is banished from his father's home and the shared secret between the two friends threatens to undo more than just the wedding, but their very lives.

Falk is blackmailed into smuggling a truckload of guns from Latvia.