Raise The Umbrellas

Four years on from Hong Kong’s 2014 democratic Umbrella Movement, nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Raise the Umbrellas traces the movement’s lineage to the global Occupy movement, the 1989 Tiananmen protests, and Hong Kong’s democratic struggles since British colonial days, even as censorship and backlash against protesters intensify. The film highlights the movement’s eco-consciousness and its growing aspiration for independence, as well as the empowerment of women—'umbrella mothers'—and the rainbow-bridging activism of LGBTQ artists who became iconic. Incisive and intimate, driven by stirring on-site footage in a major Asian metropolis riven by protest, Raise the Umbrellas also presents anti-Occupy viewpoints that reveal the substantial political risk facing post-colonial Hong Kong’s universal suffrage ambitions to define its autonomy within China.