Discoveries from Hong Kong SAR China World Cinema

The homeless are not without "homes," but they lack the rights to protect their most basic human dignity and are arbitrarily evicted. The protagonist, Granny Lai Yuen-King, was a rare elderly scavenger among them who possessed a beautiful soul but ultimately died without dignity on the streets. This short film was dedicated to all the homeless.

Using immersive camera work and a heart-pounding soundtrack, Faceless takes us to the frontline of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong to meet four young people who risk their lives and fly in the face of absolute power.

Talking to two fishermen made me realize I have never looked at Hong Kong from their perspective. Urban Diary tries to look at Hong Kong and see our shoreline from the sea. We filmed the two fishermen in action, getting on their fishing boat, experiencing fishing and looking at the ongoing reclamation of the harbour with them.

Double Relation

The antidote to loneliness may be found between the two ears instead of legs. Financially ruined, Kwong is ready to go by sleeping pills, until his attention is called to a TV commercial of a sex hotline. He is connected to a female voice who calls herself Sugar, who, initially flirtatious, becomes alarmed at the weeping suicidal voice on the other end. Sugar then tries to keep Kwong on the line by sharing her own life. Inspired by an article about a disabled sex worker, the short is a tribute to these alternative sex workers.

The first Hong Kong produced film to feature an all-female cast of 36 actresses. The ambitious project follows its 36 female characters, all of whom occupy different social positions to highlight the harsh reality of living as a woman in a modern society.

A man's life in three vignettes as he grapples with identity amidst tradition in Hong Kong's notorious Kowloon Walled City.

Mung-wan (Yam Kim-fai), a huge spendthrift, followed the ill advice of his buddy (Leung Sing-po) to cheat cash out of his millionaire uncle in San Francisco with an alleged marriage. When told that the rich man will be back in town within days, they resort to asking their destitute tenant Man-wai (Pak Suet-sin) and the newborn in her arms to pose as Mung-wan's wife and son.

HK musical horror film.

In the insurance exam hall, Wing is afraid of being categorized as social failures. She trains hard to be professional. However Wing is pressured by the examiner Chan and it’s been tough. With Wing’s pure heart, the system slowly malfunctions… When life gives you lemon, you make lemon tea and you swallow it. But is this our only way out?

The director of Hello, Love, Goodbye, outdoes herself again with another rom-com film. All it takes is one coin flip and one lie, and it leads Pia down a memory lane of her ex-boyfriend. She revisits all their special places, hoping to bump into him again and to rekindle their love. But will this lead her back to him or the beginning of anew journey?

Li Jan, a girl from Northern China travels to Hong Kong with a 90-Day tourist visa to meet with a group Tat, to be brought into the world of underground prostitution. On this first night, she is guided through different back alleys into a series of red light motels, while trying to make a single phone call. As she delves deeper into the world, the phone call seems beyond her grasp.

Chinese movie

A group of thieves break into an industrial complex to pull off a jewelry heist, but stumble upon a hidden laboratory where unorthodox SARS and Ebola experiments are taking place on stolen cadavers, who soon mutate into blood-thirsty zombies.

Flowing Stories is a documentary about change, migration of Hong Kong people and the unknowability of the future.

Mrs. Ho, a senile and distraught widow, lives by herself in a walk-up building. For more than half a century, Mrs. Ho has been living in her flat since she was married. But, after an accident, her legs went lame. Her son keeps persuading her to sell the flat and move into a building with lifts. She refuses and she wants to hold onto the flat, her only contact with her dead husband, where they used to do tap-dance together. Of course, they weren’t Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers but, the film makes touchingly clear, we need to listen to rhythm of their dance. More importantly, Mrs. Ho’s perseverance and strength recall the portrayal of another old woman – Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet) in Elia Kazan’s masterpiece Wild River (1960).

After the anti-immigration riots occurred in the UK in early August 2024, far-right called to attack 100 places, such as immigration centres, across the country on 7th Aug. The leftist urged to stand up against racism to show solidarity with communities. I joined one of the counter-protests. I jot down what I saw with my camera and reflected from the perspective of a former activist.

A woman’s husband and daughter are poisoned and killed. Determined to avenge her family's death, she travels to a mass grave to learn the art of lying at the bottom of a coffin for 79 days to absorb the essence of the sun and the moon. As a result, she practiced to become a female regal ghost and killed all her enemies. Knowing that she has broken the law, the woman turns herself in at the police station.

One sunny day during the summer holidays, two brothers have an extraordinary mission to fulfil. The mature elder brother finishes all the housework methodically while taking care of his little brother. His final task is to hang the blanket in the sun, and little brother insists on tagging along. They need to find an ideal location which is not easy as every spot is occupied on such a sunny day. Together they journey on and meet an assortment of characters and challenges.

The film is based on the Founder of Causeway Bay Books - LAM Wing-kee’s experience after he was temporarily released back to Hong Kong after 8 months of detention in Mainland China. LAM was demanded by the authorities to retrieve his computer in the bookstore in Hong Kong, alongside with the information of his customers. Only when he found out that his colleague handed over to him the wrong computer, should he start to think about possibilities besides submitting to authorities from Mainland China. The film re-enacts the events happened in the two days he was allowed to return to Hong Kong and explores LAM’s decision to defy, and refuse to leave his homeland.

Angela has no doubt that "one of these days, father will come back from the outer space to take her away because he is an alien." This thought was instilled by Angela's mother who committed suicide due to severe mental illness. Ever under the watchful eyes of her grandmother and psychiatrist, Angela starts to hear voices from the sky. Weary and scared, the grandmother has no choice but to send Angela for hospitalization. Angela's belief and longing for reunion with her parents grow stronger than ever. Eventually, she takes a leap of faith in finding her own destiny.

He is a Primary Four young kid. She is an adult woman. A series of wrong dialing brought the two together in a most fitting way.

Every time he looks in the mirror, he sees a different person altogether. He’s a man of a million faces except he’s not an actor, but a social pariah who, out of the anguish of an unrequited crush, has entered a pact with the Devil, assuming the identities of other strangers and living the lives of others with just a strange remnant of memory of past incarnations left. Sounds ideal – but what’s the catch? You don’t get to decide what happens, when it happens in life and your soul is condemned to eternal perdition until the next victim is found. Perhaps it’s a small price to pay for surviving in a city driven by greed, where people are seized by an insatiable craving for something – anything – more and better from the cradle to the grave. Contentment is, after all, a myth.

Hui Leung goes to Hong Kong from Macau

In two separated job interviews, two former gang members recalled their past, but their memories were completely at odds. After enduring extreme humiliation, both experienced changes in their mental states. Ultimately, the truth was revealed, allowing their brotherly bond to reach a new height.

Where may one find bliss, in life or in death? Four disappointed young people meet each other at a rave party, finding bliss under the influence of drugs. After sharing a brief night of ecstasy, they are suddenly transported to another realm via a car accident. Stranded and waiting to be delivered, as the lost souls witness the void and pain they leave behind in the world of the living, each must reckon and reconcile their scarred former lives, every unrequited dream and relationship, before they can finally arrive at the real land of bliss.

The kung-fu kids return to stop an evil dictator.

Music documentary with Faye Wong.

“Umbrellas Move” is a long feature documentary capturing scenes from Hong Kong’s city-wide protest, the occupy movement in 2014. This documentary witnessed a critical page of Hong Kong after transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain to China. Around 1200 thousand people have involved in this longest occupation in the history of Hong Kong in 2014. 79 days of occupation, Hong Kong people are fighting for their rights to vote under a fair election in order to be against the political controls from China.

Undercover officer Ho joins forces with his new partner, Leung Yuk Chuen, to infiltrate a gang involved in heroin trafficking. However, they repeatedly encounter unexpected events and find themselves trapped in desperate situations…

After the death of her father, theater actress Nisay returns to her hometown and reconnects with her former lover, Thida. On stage, their love finds its fullest expression but in life, they must navigate bittersweet goodbyes

Iris looks in the mirror every night to voice her frustrations, as if telling a close friend or family member her grievances, but something strange begins to happen. Iris discovers that someone is quietly solving her problems at work, which earns her praise from her coworkers and superiors, but this mysterious person is gradually invading her life—and her love life—forcing her to seek out the truth.

A masterful kung fu student must face all challengers to his honor and his school. He must battle Western boxers in the ring and Thai boxers in the street in order to prove the validity of Chinese Kung fu and to save his friends from dishonor. He even takes the rap for a murder he did not commit to save his friend.

Short film from omnibus 'Beautiful 2015,' commissioned for the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society.

Via Dolorosa captures director’s journey in reconnecting with Vietnamese homeless persons whom she filmed for another short film two years ago. While she accompanied a man in his final days, Jo searched within herself to resolve the original sin of the documentary filmmaker as a bystander to the suffering of others.

Beatrice records her experiences of gender confirmation surgery, and meditates on what it means to be a woman in this honest and very entertaining autobiographical documentary.

A depressed man’s inner world is explored as whimsical encounters with a flower seller reignite his will to live.

The Husband of a Lady

"Invited In" centers around an anxious and timid freshman named Annie, who finds herself mid pandemic realizing how isolated she has been her whole life. The feeling is heightened because of the pandemic which forces her to get out of her comfort zone and connect with someone. She makes her first “real” friend through social media with Emmy, the bright and “genuine” lifestyle influencer over Zooms until Annie is exposed to how artificial online friendships can be.

Brilliant mix of martial arts and horror in this fantastic action packed film from prolific swordplay director Chin Sheng En. Don't pass this one up, an excellent rare film to add to your list

Based on Louis Cha's novel The Book and the Sword.

A struggling couple in a Shenzhen urban village find hope in a friend's investment fantasy — until job loss and deception shatter their fragile relationship.

On, a primary school boy, seeks guidance from a Chinese chess scammer, who sets up endgames in the park. The two lonely souls find solace in their mentorship as they lie their ways out.

Fighting disabilities and cancer with their chins up, mother and son meander through the city against a tide of indifferent faces and distant eyes and arrive in a park, where blissful tranquility and a ray of sunshine await them.

Newlyweds Jenny and David began their life together full of hope, but the realities of daily life and work pressures tested their relationship. After a series of misunderstandings and arguments, they finally realized that true happiness does not come from romance, but from mutual tolerance, sharing the burdens of life, and standing by each other through thick and thin.

For Sang-yu, to be rich in Hong Kong means you get to make choices instead of someone making them for you. Hired by giant property developers to buyout ownership of tenement buildings, she earns considerable income and lives the kind of life lauded by mainstream society. During one of the buyouts, she starts to realize the harm her work inflicts upon others. She falls further into a moral dilemma when her boss assigns her a difficult buyout task, a profitable opportunity for her. In Hong Kong where real estate is considered above all else, the grassroots are left to fight for survival in desperation.

Wai Kim-Fong stars in this ode to Chinese womanhood as a woman whose bravery and patriotism are equal to those of her male comrades.

Four farmer-cum-robbers live together in a dilapidated house with a withered field. They discover a human finger inside a newly-harvested tomato one day. The gang leader decides to freeze it in the hope of selling it for a good price. Someone tells a story about a finger in a pub, so implausible that the listeners can hardly believe it. There are no fingers inside the other tomatoes and the gang remains poor. Tensions mount as the gang leader suspects a young member of hiding the secret of growing the finger-yielding tomato for his own benefit, leading to a big fight. The young man renounces his life of crime, but pays a hefty price…...

A personal transgender documentary. From the time of coming out to the time of having sex reassignment surgery.

In late 2009, over twenty Hong Kong civic groups united as the "Anti-High-Speed Rail, Stop Funding" coalition, aiming to halt Legislative Council approval of the HKD 66.9 billion Express Rail Link amid deep social rifts. The "Post-80s Anti-High-Speed Rail Youth" group drew thousands of young people with their slogan “Defend Our Homeland, Protest with Joy,” leading to three funding suspensions that surprised the public. Media coverage was intense and innovative, featuring rare camera angles and lively online debate among journalists. This documentary explores how reporters shaped the movement, their emotional involvement, and the dynamic relationship between the media and activists during Hong Kong’s pivotal 2009–10 protests.

When Hei-ji finds out that Mimi hands a love letter to Sam, a charming and handsome guy, he couldn’t help but feel hear tbroken and shattered. Should he just let her go or should he fight for her? On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Hei-ji finally overcomes all difficulties and fulfils Mimi’s wish. He even gathers up his courage and asks about the love letter.

Adapted from the novel Sanhua Nüxia by Liang Yusheng.

Deranged mind Joe Choi gives us a blood red comedy for the stoner in all of us! Set up in the vein of Low Budget Pictures or a Troma flick this SOV trashterpiece delivers the laughs and the bloodshed! No more shitty shark movies, it's time to make a good one!

During his studies in Edinburgh in 2021, filmmaker Fredie Chan experienced a protest by the locals to fight for their housing rights, as developers are discovered to be converting empty lots and unused old buildings into new international students flats, rather than resolving severe housing shortage for the locals. From the perspective of a Hongkonger, who is no stranger to housing problems, the documentary follows a group of local grassroots housing advocates, attempting to investigate the crisis, connecting the dots between global and local. Screened with the director’s previous film Beautiful Life, about an Indonesian girl who left her homeland to work as a domestic helper for a financially unstable grassroot family in Hong Kong.