It may beggar the imagination that 1960s Alabama should evoke this concrete jungle of a Chinese city. Yet Hong Kong viewers of "Selma" are seeing echoes of the American civil rights struggle in their own fight for democracy.
In the film, baton-brandishing cops advance menacingly in a shroud of tear gas. Demonstrators with beat-up bedrolls and knapsacks on their backs march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. An unarmed protester is brutalized in a dark corner by a gang of officers.
For many here, those images recall Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrations last fall, when law enforcement wielded some of the same weapons and tactics as in Selma.
"I was very close to crying. Some of the scenes really reminded me of what we've been through tear gas and all," Sam Chow, a recent college graduate, said outside a theater Saturday evening. The film opened in Hong Kong last week, after two advance screenings in February.
Hong Kong, a former British territory, was promised a high degree of autonomy and certain rights for 50 years under an international treaty governing its 1997 return to Communist-run China.
In August, the standing committee of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, set a framework for future elections for Hong Kong's chief executive, in effect limiting the choice of candidates to two or three approved by a nominating committee expected to be composed largely of people regarded as "pro-Beijing."
That framework touched off the unprecedented pro-democracy demonstrations that lasted 10 weeks and saw thousands of participants clogging major thoroughfares and surrounding government headquarters. The sit-ins ended in mid-December after police, acting on a court order, cleared the streets.
For Hong Kongers, "Selma" stirred up not just memories of the fall protests but also sober and sobering reflections.
Chow saw the movie with seven friends, all members of one of the pro-democracy organizations that sprouted during the demonstrations.
"Looking at how [African Americans] reacted to the violent treatment, I realized it'd call for much forgiveness and courage on my part," said Leo Kwan, who joined Chow at the theater.
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In Hong Kong, pro-democracy protesters find kinship with 'Selma'