Helen's Blog /

23rd April to 1st May 2010 - Teatro Nuovo "Giovanni da Udine" and the Visionario Udine Far East Film 12.

The Udine Festival is granted, for its launch on the 23rd April, the World Premiere of Dream Home, the highly anticipated slasher by Pang Ho-cheung!

15th March 2010 Udine – The highly anticipated World Premiere of Dream Home by Pang Ho-cheung will be the film to open the late-night section of Far East Film 12, during the Festival's opening night on Friday 23rd April. The news spread immediately from Hong Kong to all over Asia: in collaboration with the international distributor Fortissimo, the Festival created by Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche (C.E.C.) has in fact been awarded one of the most sensational (as well as controversial) and most recent film productions from the ex-British colony. Dream Home will be in Asian cinemas from May 2010, whereas Far East Film spectators have the chance to see the film even before the official release in its very country of origin!

With a style that’s both lucid and extreme, the film tells the story, without holding back on any of its most violent particulars, the mad obstacle course of a young woman capable of doing anything in order to obtain her Dream Home (with a sea view). The film is also a solemn, and at the same time psychotic, homage to the city of Hong Kong, to its high-rises, its houses, and its miniscule apartments, all destined to remain for many young single people, unobtainable goals, due to the extortionate prices of the entire real estate sector!

Defined and announced as the craziest and the most bloody slasher movie ever made in Hong Kong, Dream Home stars the superb Josie Ho who with her company "852 Film" is also responsible for the film's production. For Pang Ho-cheung, one of the directors on which Udine has focused its spotlights ever since You Shoot, I Shoot, in 2002, the film was a truly unique opportunity, not only for the extraordinary budget of 4 million dollars (entirely unusual for the cinema of Hong Kong today) but also for the possibility to bring to the big screen one of his numerous bizarre and irresistible stories about ghosts and black humour.

Dream Home is an essential and fundamental part of the Hong Kong selection at the Festival from Friuli, that during 9 days of programming, running from the 23rd April to 1st May, will present more than 60 films from China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.

A curious fact: the film's soundtrack is entirely Italian, composed by the musician Gabriele Roberto, who has already worked with Pang in 2007 for the thriller Exodus. Roberto has lived in Tokyo for many years, and is responsible for the music of many cinema projects; the musical scores of Memories of Matsuko and Paco and The Magical Picture Book being amongst his most famous compositions.