The year is 2025, Hong Kong is visualized as a bleak dystopia, crumbling under a repressive, authoritarian rule. Anthologized to present a broad range of perspectives and stories, the five shorts in Ten Years communicate the desolate future of a place condemned to the principle of “One country, Two systems.” In broad summary, the film addresses fictitious scenes in which the cityscape is rife with talk of political assassinations, the precarious situation of migrant workers, the soon-to-be artifacts of Hong Kong culture, the dwindling presence of Cantonese language, and the censorship of local products and “subversive” literature.

In the five years since the film’s release, where does fiction and reality overlap?

Presented by the Embassy Cultural House: Jevons Au, director of the Ten Years short “Dialect”, and Emile Dirks, Ph.D candidate at the University of Toronto studying the policing of marginalized populations in contemporary China, will come together to explore possible answers. This cross-cultural conversation will explore the way in which colonialism and authoritarianism has stifled culture both in Canada, China, and Hong Kong. It is no coincidence that the totalizing force of Britain in Canada, and China in Hong Kong, share connections in their mutual use of marginalization and oppression.