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Papa (2024) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Could you forgive murder?
Film Brain
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09/03/2025
Film Brain reviews this deeply emotional Hong Kong crime drama, based on true events, that asks how do you forgive your kin when they take the rest of your family?
Category
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Fun
Transcript
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00:00
A father has to face the unimaginable in the Hong Kong true crime drama, Papa.
00:05
Sean Lau is a restaurant owner whose world is shattered when his teenage son murders his wife and daughter.
00:11
As he reels from the shock of his loss, Lau tries to connect with his son and try to find a way forward.
00:17
The film was inspired by the Hung Wo Street murder in 2010, and despite the crime's notoriety,
00:22
Where the Wind Blows director Philip Young treats it with a great amount of sensitivity,
00:27
preferring to focus largely on the aftermath than sensationalise the incident itself.
00:32
The film has a purposefully fragmented structure, intercutting the flashbacks before the murders,
00:36
each focusing on a member of the family and meant to evoke the feeling of memory.
00:41
Lau buys himself a digital camera to take photos of his family, reinforcing this idea,
00:45
but also that these frozen happy memories miss the complexities underneath.
00:50
The scenes in the past are vibrant and busy compared to the muted ones in the present,
00:54
giving you a sense of how Lau's successful life has been destroyed in one senseless moment.
00:59
Sean Lau gives a fantastic performance in the lead role, which is as understated as a loss of the film is.
01:06
Lau has this deep well of sadness in his face, and at times is a barely functional shell of a man,
01:11
and it's quietly heartbreaking as he tries to navigate everything that comes after
01:15
in a world that recognises him constantly for the worst day of his life.
01:19
There's only a few moments where his grief rises to the surface,
01:22
like when he gets scammed by an escort or a karaoke scene, which makes them incredibly powerful.
01:28
Lau's everyman makes us ask how we would react in his situation,
01:32
and how would we find the strength to keep going through the darkness.
01:36
Especially challenging for Lau is the meetings with his son, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia
01:41
in an attempt to bridge the distance between them.
01:43
While Lau at times got frustrated raising his son,
01:46
who quietly struggled with his mental health before the crime,
01:49
as a father he refuses to give up on him.
01:52
Lau spends a lot of the film searching for a reason why his son did it,
01:56
but accepting that it's an irrational act of illness is the only way they can both try to heal.
02:02
This is a deeply empathetic film that slowly and thoughtfully examines what tragedy does
02:07
to the ones who survive, without becoming exploitative or maudlin,
02:11
and for those that have the patience, this will linger in your mind for days afterward.
Recommended
2:31
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