Fagara

Film description

After receiving news of her father's sudden death, Acacia, a young Hong Kong woman, is faced with a difficult task of organizing a funeral and taking care of a family restaurant. She was long estranged with her father and while looking through his contacts she finds out about the existence of her two half-sisters, one from Taiwan and the other from China. Three women meet at a funeral, which gives them the opportunity to confront their childhood memories, feelings of abandonment, resentmen towards the constantly absent father and selfish mothers. The sisterly reunion will change their lives in an unexpected way.

Losely based on Amy Cheung's 2010 bestseller novel, "Fagara" is an intimate picture of difficult family relations, as complicated as the contradictory sentiments between Hong Kongers, Taiwanese and mainland Chinese. The motif of a broken family reflects the situation of the three sisters, as well as the represented areas, separated by history, very different, but originating from one lineage. The director and screenwriter Heiward Mak pushes aside the romantic plot dominant in the book and focuses on the theme of the family, the generational conflict, to which the solution lies in the culinary art. After all, in Sinophone cinemas, the process of preparing food and a shared meal is the best family therapy, especially in a holiday movie such as "Fagara", which plot coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival. Exactly twenty-five years after the premiere of Ang Lee's "Eat Drink Man Woman", Haiward Mak creates a modern portrait of the three sisters, reflecting the political and social situation of the second decade of the 21st century.

Maja Korbecka