Hong Kong Film Festival KEEP LOOKING? Review
Anna Ieong’s debut short, KEEP LOOKING?, is a ruthlessly chaotic ode to the mess of filmmaking itself, depicting a cinematic crashout of a director, Chan Fei Hong (Endy Ieong), his crew, and just about anything that can go wrong on a film set. The premise is simple: a director loses his camera’s memory card, and the crew spirals into a wild hunt to find it. But beneath this straightforward plot, writer and director Ieong cleverly unpacks the emotional tension and fragile egos that drive creative collaboration. What begins as a comedy of errors slowly unravels into a biting critique of gender and power dynamics in film production.
Shot entirely on an iPhone from the perspective of the director of photography, Cason Tam, the film’s opening feels like a family vlog. The audience is placed into a cramped hotel room littered with takeout containers, half-smoked cigarette packs, and empty beer bottles. This is a familiar scene for anyone who’s ever been part of a newly wrapped indie shoot. The crew celebrates the end of their zombie film ZomBite You.
Ieong has plenty of fun in directing the over-dramatic and absurd reactions of her characters. Following in the director's manic footsteps, the crew tears the room apart. The producer is ripping tissues from their box, the lead actor (Ernesto de Sousa) is checking air vents, while the lead actress (Marceline Ma) is calling a psychic for spiritual guidance. The handheld cinematography, jagged cuts, and basic editing creates a frantic, documentary-like realism. As a student film, Ieong proves you don’t need fancy equipment or studio polish to capture the fever dream of filmmaking.
The emotional climax belongs to Vicky (played by Vicky Tong), the overworked script supervisor who's been taking the engetical brunt of the production since the beginning. Her monologue, equal parts rage, exhaustion, and love, lands like a gut punch. The silent reaction of her fellow crew members shines light on the hypocrisy of the film industry, where men’s meltdowns are coddled and romanticized as artistic suffering, while women’s frustrations are dismissed as hysteria with no resolution.
The story ends as abruptly as a shoot day gone wrong. Leong’s satirical lens on filmmaking brilliantly depicts the absurd passion that drives artistic creation. KEEP LOOKING? is a must-watch for any creative in need of a reality check (and a laugh) about the beautiful mess behind the movie industry.
