HONG KONG (AP) – Public screenings of a slasher film starring Winnie the Pooh were abruptly halted in Hong Kong on Tuesday, sparking discussions of increasing censorship in the city.
Film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment said on Facebook that the launch of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” was canceled with “great regret” in Hong Kong and neighboring Macau on Thursday.
In an email reply to The Associated Press, the distributor said it had been notified by theaters that they could not screen the film as planned, but didn’t know why. The cinema chains involved did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For many residents, the Winnie the Pooh character is a playful mockery of China’s President Xi Jinping, and Chinese censorship had briefly banned social media searches for the bear in the country in the past. In 2018, the film Christopher Robin, also starring Winnie the Pooh, was reportedly denied a release in China.
The film, which is being filmed in Hong Kong, has sparked concern on social media about the territory’s shrinking freedoms.
The film was originally slated to open in about 30 Hong Kong cinemas, VII Pillars Entertainment wrote last week.
The Office of Films, Newspapers and Articles Administration said it had approved the film and local cinemas’ arrangements to screen approved films were “the commercial decisions of the cinemas concerned”. It declined to comment on such agreements.
A screening in a cinema originally planned for Tuesday evening had been canceled for “technical reasons”, the organizer announced on Instagram.
Kenny Ng, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Film Academy, declined to speculate as to the reason for the cancellation, but suggested the mechanism for silencing criticism appears to resort to commercial decisions.
Hong Kong is a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and vowed to preserve its Western-style freedoms. But China imposed a national security law after massive pro-democracy protests in 2019 and silenced or jailed many dissidents.
In 2021, the government tightened guidelines, empowering censors to ban films believed to have violated the sweeping law.
Ng said the city has seen more cases of censorship over the past two years, mostly targeting non-commercial films such as independent shorts.
“If there’s a red line, then there’s more taboos,” he said.