School on Fire

A secondary school in Hong Kong. A gang operates in and around it, taking money from students, making them sell, while the administration looks away. A girl gives a statement to the police. After that her life ends. The gang goes to her family, she is threatened at school, nobody stands with her, and the teachers choose to protect their own positions. She is left alone and the situation escalates. Ringo Lam directs. It is the last part of Lam's On Fire trilogy; the two earlier films were about crime and prison, and this carries the same harshness into a school. The production ran into censorship seriously. The Hong Kong authorities would not pass it as it was; cuts were demanded and it could only be shown in an altered form. The reason given was how it depicted schools and institutions. The subject is not violence but abandonment. At every step the girl goes to an adult and is turned away each time; the film puts the real guilt there. The tone is hopeless and the ending is far outside genre convention; the narrative offers no resolution. Lam's manner is direct: handheld camera, hard cutting and undecorated violence. Who it is for: viewers who follow eighties Hong Kong cinema and harsh social drama. Who it is not for: it is distressing, hopeless, and some scenes are difficult to endure.