City Without Baseball

Sexuality, suppressed emotion and urban alienation occupy the minds of the Hong Kong baseball team, searching for their place in a city where baseball culture is non-existent. Who are these invisible players if no one is cheering them on? Stripping bare the cast of real athletes, City Without Baseball is a postmodern youth drama and a sports film, that plays cheekily with each genre’s iconographies. The handsome and charismatic protagonists play alongside camaraderie, crushes, love, competition and homoeroticism that seep beyond the locker room in a strikingly bare manner that marks a new approach to queer films in Hong Kong. Co-directed by Lawrence Lau Kwok-Cheong, Scud’s directorial debut invites viewers to reflect on the complexities of human relationships, as well as the courage required to break free from societal expectations. Laying out the blueprints for his later work, City Without Baseball blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary, and fictionalises the lives of the baseball players navigating the challenges of youth in the universal quest for acceptance in a society that so often sidelines individuality. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)