A suicidal alcoholic’s last day teems with images of anxiety and Kafkaesque paranoia. Adapted from Marek Hlasko’s novel ‘The First Step in the Clouds’, Has’ feature debut is cinematic delirium tremens, as young man Kuba Kowalski escapes his cramped flat to wander from bar to bar, unable to escape the trap of isolation. The metaphorical noose tightens as Kuba, nearly saved by the love of a good woman, dives deeper into hallucinatory intoxication.
In this powerful documentary, Mama Yang, an 84-year-old woman living in New York, finds herself in correspondence with 45 high security prison inmates she views as her own children. Most are Chinese American immigrants, and see in Mama Yang a mother figure they never knew before they stepped through prison walls.
For Mama Yang though, the story is about more than Christian charity. She had already lived a full life in Taiwan when her husband died at age sixty and her son lost their house in a financial blunder. She moved to the US to start anew and lives with a Taiwanese American granddaughter that remains distant. In a film marked by family separations, Mama Yang writes letters – whether to the incarcerated or to her own granddaughter – to heal lifetimes of wounds.