Winner of the Crystal Bear (youth audience award) at the Berlin Film Festival and Hong Kong’s official entry for the 2010 Oscars, Echoes of the Rainbow is a graceful and emotionally powerful tale based on the filmmaker’s own childhood. It’s the spring of 1969 and the world will have to wait another six months before Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon—but our young hero “Big Ears” is running through the streets of Hong Kong with a goldfish bowl on his head, pretending to be an astronaut. Big brother Desmond (played wonderfully by Cantopop heartthrob Aarif Lee) is a gold-medal track star and ace student who plays guitar and nurtures a nascent romance with soft-spoken Flora. Meanwhile, their parents work their fingers to the bone running a tiny neighborhood shoe store. Their dream is simple: All they want is for their children to have a better life than they did—and this mood of nostalgic optimism and yearning is reflected perfectly by the ’60s pop ballads wafting from big brother’s transistor radio. But the sunny tone soon darkens as the family is beset by a slumping economy, social unrest and the onset of Hong Kong’s annual typhoons—presaging an even more wrenching family tragedy. This wonderful, bittersweet saga is almost epic in scale, evoking good times and bad, love and loss, with sincerity, humor and tenderness. Note: Contains emotionally charged situations and some brief but intense images.


Written by Alex Law. Photographed by Charlie Lam. With Buzz Chung, Aarif Lee, Simon Yam, Sandra Ng, Ann Hui. (117 min. In Cantonese, Mandarin and French with subtitles, Mei Ah Entertainment) Recommended for ages ten and up.