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Essentially a mixture of Johnnie To's cinematic style (and casting) and the story of “Infernal Affairs” plus somewhat of John Woo's heroic bloodshed, “Line Walker” aims, though, mostly at entertainment. The film is based on the homonymous 2014 TV series, and later on spawned a sequel.

“Line Walker” is available from Echelon Studios

A Hong Kong police chief who has the identities of all undercover agents in his files manages to protect them by deleting the files before he is murdered. However, this also means that a number of them continue to work unbeknownst to the body of the Force. Agent Ding Siu-ka and her handler Inspector Q are working out their names with great success, with the exception of Blackjack, an undercover agent that has been working in the most notorious drug syndicate of Hong Kong.

Two years after they have started their research, they receive a message...

Local films grossed a combined $32.5m (Hk$252.9m) for a 13.2% market share.

Hong Kong’s box office decreased by just 1.74% to $247.4m (Hk$1.92bn) in 2019, despite the impact of political protests that have rocked the city since the middle of last year.

According to data from Hong Kong Box Office, the total was achieved despite a decline in the total number of films released to 326 titles compared to 353 the previous year. Overall box office was up by around 6% in the first half of 2019, but started to dip when the protests became more regular in the second half of the year.

Three Indian and three mainland Chinese films are among the nine feature movies shortlisted for the Best Asian Film Award by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

The Indian selections are box office hit “Andhadhun,” “Super Deluxe, and “Gully Boy,” which premiered in February at the Berlin festival. The Chinese trio includes “Shadow,” sci-fi hit “The Wandering Earth,” and “Ne Zha,” an animation sensation that was named as China’s Oscars hopeful.

The other three are: Philippines box office record breaker “Hello Love Goodbye”; Japan’s “We Are Little Zombies,” and “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner and South Korea’s Oscar contender.

“Over the past year, the global reach of Asian film has continued to grow with an increasing number of high-quality, creative storylines being recognised at international film festivals and at the local and international box office,” said Aacta.

Judging the entries will...

Chinese animation “Nezha” continues its meteoric ascent to become one of China’s top-performing titles of all time, leading the weekend box office for the third week in a row thanks to a $66.5 million haul — still more than double that of its closest competitor, despite already having been in theaters for 18 days.

Its success has been boosted by a serious lack of other contenders: Every film below the top four grossers earned less than $700,000 this weekend, not even 1% of “Nezha’s” takings. The uneven performance highlights the struggles facing China’s box office this summer, as the pipeline of popular local titles dries up because of regulatory changes and a highly sensitive political anniversary coming up in October that has sent censors into overdrive.

With a total gross so far of $503 million (RMB3.55 billion), “Nezha” is already the fifth-highest-grossing title in Chinese film history, falling just behind last year’s “Operation Red Sea,...

Madrid is booming as never before in its 125-year film history; arguably, no other European site is currently transforming so quickly into a global production hub.

A 20-minute drive north of the Spanish capital, a large white-concrete hanger has been built beside the Madrid-Burgos motorway, at the entrance to Tres Cantos, a well-heeled satellite village and industrial estate. Welcome to Netflix’s Madrid Production Hub, its first in Europe, which opened April 4.

Five minutes away from that are the offices of Movistar +, the pay TV unit of Telefonica, Europe’s second largest telecom, which has produced and released 20 original series since September 2017.

A quarter of an hour towards the city, in the Fuencarral district, the Mediapro Studio opened its doors last month, announcing it had 34 drama series in phases of production this year.

A hundred yards down the road are the offices of Mediterráneo, the new content production-distribution center of Mediaset España,...