Permanent Residence

Description

Ivan has been searching an answer to a lifetime question: Where will we be after the present life? On the way, he went through a difficult passion with Windson, a straight guy, made a longtime friendship with Josh, a Palestinian, experienced the death of his beloved elderly, witness the wedding of his brother and the birth of a nephew. Eventually he designed a permanent residence at his own soil to host all his loved ones for the next life, in case there is any, while his friend Josh created a home at the Dead Sea for those not so much loved.

Running Time: 115mins
Subtitles: Chinese and English
Language: Cantonese and English

Written, produced and directed by SCUD
Cinematography by HERMAN YAU
Art Direction & Costume Design by RON HEUNG
Music by TEDDY ROBIN
Edited by JACKIE LEUNG

Main Cast
Sean LI  Osman HUNG   Jackie CHOW  Hong LAU  Eva LO

• 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam– Official Selection and Focus Director
• 10th Chinese Film Media Awards – Best New Actor
• 33rd Hong Kong International Film Festival – Official Selection
• 20th Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival – Official Selection (Director’s Cut)
• 10th Taipei Film Festival – Special Reserved Screening (Director’s Cut)
• 25th Torino GLBT Film Festival – Official Selection
• 33rd Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival– Official Selection and Focus Director
  

Scud solely directs the films he also writes and produces. Permanent Residence was shot in Israel, Japan, Australia, Thailand, mainland China and Hong Kong. Being the first of his “Trilogy of Finitude”, the film explores the limits of life. It is a story of a gay man who indulges in thoughts of afterlife and passionately falls in love with a straight friend. It’s an immediate hit in Taiwan. While the casting of Osman Hung, a teen idol and vocalist of a leading group stunned the industry, the groundbreaking performance of Sean Li, another leading man, won him a Best New Actor Award in China.

“Ivan, a handsome and brilliant IT guy, is coming to terms with his identity and sexuality in Scud’s sophomore feature, Permanent Residence.

Ivan meets Windson at the gym, a man so beautiful and athletic he must be a fantasy. They strike a queer friendship, spending their time together, sparring, travelling, going to beaches and having all sorts of manly fun wearing nothing but Adam’s robes. There is only one catch. Windson is straight and draws a strict boundary when it comes to sex, and so Ivan’s odyssey begins.

Scud draws on his own personal experiences to continue to challenge the usual image of queer men in Hong Kong cinema. Promoting camp to higher art, Permanent Residence continues to showcase the Asian male body so ostentatiously celebrated in City Without Baseball ( 2007 ). This film marks one of two collaborations with the Hong Kong legend Herman Yau as director of photography and the beginning of Scud’s gusto for self-referentiality, a detail which fortifies the fictional world Scud has built for his protagonist. A world where beautiful fantasies become reality, but one that has no immunity from pain or heartbreak, provoking contemplations of life, love, death and belonging. – kijA (Excerpts from the IFFR 2024 website)