In Chong Keat Aun's Snow in Midsummer, the ghosts of Malaysia's past dance with the living, their steps tracing a history written in blood. In 1969 Kuala Lumpur, a Cantonese opera performance becomes an unlikely sanctuary from the shocking violence erupting outside the theater. As political mobs slaughter the Chinese minority, a schoolgirl and her mother huddle backstage, awaiting family members performing in "Snow in June"—an eerily apt tale of corruption and injustice. This is the harrowing backdrop of Chong Keat Aun's shattering masterpiece, a film that excavates the buried traumas of Malaysia's notorious 513 incident. Chong audaciously interweaves the opera's melodrama with the real-life tragedy unfolding in the streets, creating a dreamlike collision of art and atrocity. At the center of the tragedy: Ah Eng, the girl whose life will be forever haunted by that night's horrors. Flashing forward to 2018, Chong traces the aftermath of the riots, as Ah Eng finally unearths the truth of her family's fate. With its haunting imagery and devastating emotional impact, Snow in Midsummer is both a powerful act of remembrance for a forgotten massacre and a trenchant exploration of the scars left by sectarian violence. It's a film that sears itself into your memory, as indelible as the history it commemorates. In Chong's hands, the past isn't dead; it isn't even past.