SNIPPING FREEDOM: A statue by the city’s harbour commemorating the Hong Kong Film Awards

Hong Kong: The director of “Far From Home,” a short, intimate film about a family caught in the tumult of the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong, had hoped to show off her work at a local film festival in June. Then the censors stepped in. They told the director, Mok Kwan-ling, that her film’s title — which in Cantonese could carry a suggestion of cleaning up after a crime — must go. Dialogue expressing sympathy for an arrested protester had to be excised. Scenes of removing items from a room also had to be cut, apparently because they may be construed as concealing evidence.

In total, Mok was ordered to make 14 cuts from the 25-minute film. But she said that doing so would have destroyed the balance she had attempted to forge between the views of protesters and those who opposed. So she refused, and her film has thus far gone unseen by the public.

Hong Kong’s world-famous film scene, which nurtured groundbreaking directors like John Woo and Wong Kar-wai, has become the latest form of expression to be censored since Beijing imposed a tough new national security law on the former British colony last year.

In March, a local theater pulled the prize-winning protest documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall” after a state-run newspaper said it incited hatred of China. At least two Hong Kong directors have decided to not release new films locally. When an earlier film by one of those directors was shown to a private gathering last month, the gathering was raided by the police. Directors say they fear the government will force them to cut their films — and, potentially, put them in prison— if they dismiss demands and show their work.

Beyond the national security law, the government plans to toughen its censorship policies to allow it to ban or force cuts to films deemed “contrary to the interests of national security.” Such powers would also be retroactive, meaning that authorities could bar films that were previously approved. People that show such films could face up to three years in prison.