Snow in Midsummer

[Snow in Midsummer] is the latest film by CHONG Keat Aun, winner of Best New Director at the 57th Golden Horse Awards, whose first feature, [The Story of Southern Islet], was selected to the 2021 Locarno International Film Festival.

On 13 May 1969, as Su-mei and her daughter Ah Eng watch the Cantonese opera at Chinese Temple, Kuala Lumpur, her husband Ah Kooi and son, Ah Yeow, are at the Majestic Theatre. A violent riot unexpectedly erupts, and Su-mei’s husband and son are both killed trying to escape. In a panic, Su-mei and her daughter take shelter behind the opera stage the whole night. The Prime Minister declares over the radio that the nation is under a state of emergency and martial law has been immediately imposed. The bodies of Su-mei’s husband and son vanish in the aftermath of the riot.

Forty-nine years later, Ah Eng discovers a news article about an almost demolished “513” cemetery. On 13 May 2018, she continues her mother’s will to track down her father and brother’s burial location.