‘It would be so boring just being a businessman,” notes the Hong Kong entrepreneur and media mogul Jimmy Lai, who became a billionaire building a chain of popular clothing stores in Hong Kong and China and could be living in resplendency at the moment. Instead, “I want to make my life more meaningful,” he adds. At present he languishes in a prison cell.
It’s the kind of simple remark, containing oceans of fortitude, that typifies the indomitability Mr. Lai displays in the interviews at the heart of the important documentary “The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom.” Director Ron Holwerda tells the businessman’s life story against the backdrop of an increasingly menacing Chinese Communist Party, interspersing news footage of protests with insights offered by Mr. Lai, diplomats and human-rights activists.