June 2025 is packed with rediscoveries and reissues, led by some of the biggest news to hit the repertory scene in years. Back in January, Variety reported that Shout! Factory had acquired the Golden Princess library, described as “a treasure trove of 156 Hong Kong cinema classics that’s been MIA from Western markets for decades”. I know enough to know that the reasons for this are complicated, but not enough to lay it all out in detail—the basic story, as I’ve heard it, is that Golden Princess left the film business in the ’90s, at which point the rights to all those classics reverted to a real-estate company that wasn’t interested in distributing them abroad.

Six months later, Shout! Factory formally announced the launch of Hong Kong Cinema Classics, a new imprint dedicated to bringing the work of filmmakers like John Woo, Ringo Lam, Johnnie To and Tsui Hark back into circulation in North America. (Arrow Video just acquired the UK rights.) The first wave of releases is all digital, which is just out of the purview of this column; we’ll return to HKCC next month, when the label’s first discs hit the market.

But considering the outsized influence these films have had on American cinema—without ’80s Hong Kong action, there’s no Tarantino, no Wachowskis and definitely no John Wick series—their absence, and subsequent re-emergence, are huge. The only downside to this news is that I’ll have to take Hard Boiled off my “most egregious movies you can’t get on streaming” list, but that’s a sacrifice I’m happy to make.

The Degenerates / Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me!

2K restorations premiering at Tribeca Film Festival June 11 from Severin Films.

If flying to New York for the debut is impossible, take heart: both The Degenerates and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me! were restored and are being shepherded by Severin Films, meaning that deluxe discs are probably coming soon.

The Sealed Soil

Restoration debuts May 30 from Arbelos and Venera Films.

It’s quite a pivot from Andy Milligan to Iranian slow cinema, but The Sealed Soil does have one thing in common with The Degenerates and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me! Viewers also have to meet Marva Nabili’s first feature on its level—not due to a lack of polish but because of its measured pace. Rischka declares it “a simple story that blossoms with what one brings to it”, while Jane makes a common—and appropriate—comparison by calling it “Akerman in a small Iranian village”. The main character’s domestic routine is as excruciating as Jeanne Dielman’s, as she slowly suffocates in a patriarchal environment that deems her an “old maid” at the age of eighteen. And her breaking point, when it does come, is just as earth-shaking.

Roo-Bekheir (Flora Shabaviz) lives with her parents, and the first half of the film takes place mainly within the walls of their ancestral home. The effect is so claustrophobic that it’s shocking when she finally leaves the house midway through the film, and breathtaking when she removes her veil for a sensual and liberatory sequence where, finally free from the judgmental eyes that surround her, Roo-Bekheir drops her shoulders and allows herself an unselfconscious moment in the rain. “She is ill, just not in the way that her family thinks. It’s the sexist expectations and repressions that are making her suffer,” Rosalind observes.

Nabili began working on The Sealed Soil before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the film’s “immense anger… under a deceptively peaceful surface” is directed at encroaching religious fundamentalism as well as oppressive small-town tradition. After a six-day shoot in 1976, the director smuggled a rough cut out of Iran in a false-bottom suitcase and completed post-production abroad. It’s never screened in its country of origin.

Fans of Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, which I recommended in last month’s Watchlist This! column—and is also unseen in its home country—should take note as well. A restored version of The Sealed Soil spent much of last year (slowly, deliberately) winding its way through the festival circuit, and is now preparing to begin its first-ever US theatrical run at the BAM Rose Cinema in Brooklyn before launching a national expansion in June.

Winter Kept Us Warm

4K restoration premieres June 21 at Metrograph from Canadian International Pictures.

“The history of queer cinema is the history of subtext,” Mister All Sunday writes, and here the unacknowledged-but-obvious tension is between Doug (John Labow) and Peter (Henry Tarvainen), two undergraduates at the University of Toronto. Although their personalities and backgrounds are very different, they hit it off right away, bonding over their shared love of poetry—the film’s title comes from T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’—and wholesome outdoor activities. Set in an era when folk music and civil rights were in the zeitgeist, Winter Kept Us Warm feels like it’s on the cusp of major change, both personal and on a societal level.

Spoiler alert: the boys never kiss. This disappoints some Letterboxd , but Louisa writes that “it feels very genuine, and very of its time and place”, noting that “homosexuality was still illegal in Canada” when this movie was made. “[Director David] Secter made the film based on his own experiences, and so it feels very true to life and, unlike most queer films pre-1969, free of misery and condemnation,” they continue, pointing to the warmth that many note in their reviews.

Christopher writes that it’s “cozy and sweet and cheap and sad and just my cup of tea”, and Winter Brings Us Warm will bring just a hint of cold Canadian winter to the sweltering heat of NYC with screenings June 21 and 22 at Metrograph.

The Nice Guys

4K UHD and Blu-ray available June 16 from Second Sight Films.

The Nice Guys underperformed at the box office upon its initial release, but its reputation has been improving ever since. The 150-page book that accompanies the Second Sight disc completes its arc from “underrated” to “cult classic”, and includes an essay by Letterboxd’s managing editor, Mitchell Beaupre.

Shanghai Blues

4K Restoration in theaters June 20 from Film Movement.

Tsui Hark’s Peking Opera Blues is part of the Hong Kong Cinema Classics collection mentioned in this month’s intro, and is set for release on North American streaming services in July. But—perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not—another distributor, Film Movement, pre-empts that release this month with its restoration of another Hark film, Shanghai Blues. Shanghai is the lesser known of the two movies, at least in the West; as Schratzi writes, “[in] its home country… it’s rightfully revered as a beloved classic.” Set in the early days of the second Sino-Japanese War, it’s a bright and lively pseudo-musical that, despite its wartime setting, is “light as air and fast as a rocket”, as Schratzi puts it.

A pivot from his angrier, more pointedly political early work into mainstream escapism, Shanghai Blues birthed the version of Tsui Hark who produced and/or directed some of the most commercially successful films in Hong Kong cinema. More than anything, however, Shanghai Blues is recommended for fans of previous Shelf Life selections One from the Heart and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, who will swoon for this film’s bright, saturated fruit-candy palette, hazy neon lighting and heightened romantic artificiality. Filipe writes that it has “some of the most inviting colors of any major 1980s film”, noting a nostalgia for “Chinese cinema past” that gives the movie a bittersweet edge.

Combined with some good old-fashioned Hong Kong slapstick comedy, this is a capital-M Movie, one that hasn’t aged well in every aspect—one scene parallels an infamous moment in Revenge of the Nerds—but remains an airy confection that Kyle describes as “all I’ve ever wanted in a movie”. Overseen by Hark and completed at Italy’s L’Immagine Ritrovata, Film Movement’s new 4K restoration premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and begins its North American theatrical tour on June 20.