Hong Kong’s New Film Law Mostly Threatens Independent Auteurs, Observers Say

This picture taken on Sept. 2, 2021 shows a women looking at movie advertisements at a cinema in Hong Kong. Once renowned for world-class cinema, Hong Kong's already struggling film industry must confront a new hurdle—Chinese mainland style censorship controls as authorities take their purge of dissent into the cultural sphere. Isaac Lawrence/AFP via Getty Images

The film censorship law passed by Hong Kong’s legislature last week is ostensibly aimed at promoting national security, although observers of the deteriorating state of intellectual and creative freedom in the city are calling it one of the more blatant attempts to yoke Hong Kong more closely to the machinery of authoritarian rule in Beijing.

Theoretically directed at content in films that might endanger national security, and threatening violators with fines and up to three years in prison, the law is of a piece with Beijing’s more general heavy-handed approach, as exemplified by the national security law imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.