East Asia Film Festival Ireland (EAFFI) is delighted to be partnering with Asia Market and DLNY, to present Flowers of Shanghai (1998) in a beautiful digital 4K restoration for the Lunar New Year 2025: Year of the Snake.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s (EAFFI guest of honour, 2017) hypnotic human comedy, based on Han Ziyun’s 1894 masterpiece novel, Hai Shang Hua, depicts life in the elegant brothels or ‘flower houses’ found in Shanghai’s foreign concessions in the late Qing dynasty in 1884, where prominent figures were received by ‘flower girls’ in an enclosed world with its own codes, money negotiations, romantic intrigues, and tensions. One of Hou’s most celebrated and stunning works, shot in exquisite long takes by Hou’s longtime collaborator, Mark Lee Ping-Bing creates a ‘glamorous realism’.

Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard.