Don't Play With Fire
Opens September 29, 2026
September 30, 2026 | 7:15pm | SIFF Film Center
Presented by Grand Illusion Cinema. Long difficult to find, Tsui Hark's Don't Play With Fire (aka Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind) is one of the most controversial and violent crime films from the Hong Kong New Wave of the 1980s. Now newly restored!
After a fatal hit-and-run, three high school friends flee the crime scene. They are witnessed by Pearl, a sadistic young girl who pursues the group and blackmails them into more crimes, with increasingly disastrous consequences.
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
Part of Grand Illusion's Hong Kong Cinema Classics series.
Special live intro from local Hong Kong genre film connoisseur and one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Society, Patrick McFarland.
“No film captures [Tsui Hark’s] early renegade style better.” — Stephanie Monohan, Screen Slate
“An unflinching, nihilistic examination of juvenile delinquency in an unstable political climate, [it] still holds up more than three decades on, both as a piece of entertainment and as a cautionary tale about the dangers of a disenfranchised young generation.” — James Marsh, ScreenAnarchy
- Director: Tsui Hark
- Principal Cast: Lo Lieh, Lin Chen-Chi, Paul Che Biu-Law, Albert Au Shui-Keung, Lung Tin-Sang
- Country: Hong Kong
- Year: 1980
- Running Time: 96 min.
- Language: Cantonese with English Subtitles
- Has Subtitles: Yes