One day, I was chatting with the owner of a local bakery. When she found out that I work in the local film industry, she complained to me that while she doesn’t like to watch Hong Kong-mainland co-productions, she also found that local films have become too serious. “Films are supposed to be entertaining,” she moped. “They’re too sad now!” I think that her complaint is valid, and there are very logical reasons why fully locally funded films have become so serious.
While seasoned commercial filmmakers have gone to mainland China to get their big-budget commercial films funded, the local industry has been running on films by new filmmakers who must work on lower budgets to prove their mettle. Mostly trained in academic institutions rather than large commercial productions, this generation of young filmmakers came from intellectual backgrounds and value self-expression over simply making commercially driven mass entertainment.
With most of their debut films supported by government funding, they can afford to tell personal, serious stories that matter to them without facing the pressure of money-driven investors. As a result, many locally produced films by young filmmakers, which are made under very financially restrictive conditions, do tend to be serious fare about heavy topics.
However, the most astonishing development of 2023 was that all five of the year’s top-grossing local films in Hong Kong were by new directors making their first or second feature films.
First, a recap: After a hugely successful second half of 2022 that saw the easing of Covid restrictions and local blockbusters Warriors of Future, Mama’s Affair, The Sparring Partner and Table for Six making big bucks at the local box office, the long-struggling Hong Kong film industry had hoped that the commercially successful 2022 would spark a fire. But 2023 proved that the fire turned out to be a burst of fireworks that fizzled out.
The final month of 2022 did promise two potential hit films for the early months of 2023: Jack Ng’s legal drama A Guilty Conscience and the Mabel Cheung documentary To My 19-Year-Old Self. The former had local comedy superstar Dayo Wong in a rare dramatic role, while the latter earned very strong positive wordof- mouth from previews during the final months of the year. With a distributor that happened to run Hong Kong’s second-largest cinema chain and a prime Lunar New Year release slot, A Guilty Conscience proved to be an even bigger success than anyone expected. It was not a traditional Lunar New Year film, but the idea of a smart-mouth underdog fighting an unfair legal system that is rigged to help the elite seemed to resonate with audiences of all demographics. Also helped by praise for Wong’s performance, the film not only smashed the record for the highest-grossing local film of all-time, it also became the first local film to pass the HK$100 million (11.8 million euros) at the box office, a mark that has only been previously achieved by Marvel and James Cameron. On the other hand, Mabel Cheung’s critically acclaimed documentary To My 19-Year-Old Self – which traces a decade in the lives of several students in Cheung’s alma mater – became a matter of great notoriety just several days after its official theatrical release in February. At least two of the film’s subjects revealed to local media that they either did not sign a release to approve the film’s theatrical release or did not approve of Cheung including footage shot without their permission.
Another interviewee, professional athlete Sarah Lee, added oil to the fire immediately afterwards by revealing that she, too, was not informed that her brief interview (filmed at an overseas competition with a small crew) would be featured in a film.
The controversy set off a maelstrom of negative press, which was not helped by Cheung and her producer telling different versions of the story, and a heated debate on social media about consent in documentary filmmaking.
Within four days of its theatrical release, Cheung announced that the film’s theatrical release would end prematurely the following day. Ironically, the public furore and the withdrawal announcement led to its final shows to be quickly sold out, turning it into a commercial success. Even with its release prematurely concluded, the film is already by far the highest-grossing Hong Kong documentary of all time.
Two months after the controversy broke out, the film was surprisingly announced as the Best Film winner at the Hong Kong Film Awards. When Cheung’s co-director, William Kwok, said in his acceptance speech, “Just shoot it first, just edit it first, and just release it first,” public furore flared up again, as people rushed to denounce Kwok’s comment as an irresponsible defence of his perceived unethical documentary filmmaking methods. Even if To My 19-Year-Old Self will remain unseen for a very long time, it has sent fears among documentary filmmakers about whether their films will be viewed under similar scrutiny. For better or worse, no other Hong Kong film stirred up that kind of excitement for the rest of the year. Despite the official end of all Covid restrictions in March, the film industry failed to repeat the success of the previous year in 2023. Due to a global inflation crisis, an ongoing emigration wave (especially among younger professionals), a change in spending habits (scores of people now head up to neighbouring Shenzhen every weekend for the lower prices), an abrupt shift in Hollywood film release dates due to the actors’ strike, and the increasing domination of streaming as people’s preferred choice of entertainment platform, cinemagoing suffered a sharp drop in 2023. According to data from the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, box office in Hong Kong for 2023 was 25% down from 2019 and only slightly higher than the total box office revenue in 2011 (yes, that long ago).
Things have been so bad for local exhibitors that they offered large discounts for their 10:00 p.m. screenings to entice audiences back for a large part of the year.
Even more surprising is that none of the year’s five most popular local films is the traditional big-screen extravaganza that would usually fill cinema seats.
A serious, solemn film that explores tiger parenting’s effect on children’s mental health, Nick Cheuk’s Time Still Turns the Pages was released with modest commercial expectations after its autumn film festival premieres. However, the film’s themes resonated strongly with younger audiences, many of whom related to the characters’ experiences and the traumatic events in the film. While not an instant hit like A Guilty Conscience, the film saw a steady stream of audiences week after week, slowly inching itself past competitor In Broad Daylight to become the second highest-grossing local film of the year.
In a similar vein, In Broad Daylight, Lawrence Kan’s torn-from-the-headlines social justice drama about a journalist’s investigation into abuse in private care facilities, also became a major word-of-mouth success. However, the film’s hot topic was not only the troubled state of private care homes in a city with an ageing population; it was also a sobering depiction of honest investigative journalism at a time when the future of Hong Kong’s media freedom hangs in the balance.
Even Over My Dead Body, Ho Cheuktin’s follow-up to his sleeper hit The Sparring Partner, turned out to be more than just an ensemble comedy. A Weekend at Bernie’s-esque black comedy, the film follows a group of apartment residents trying to get rid of a corpse from their floor in fear that it would cause their flats to plummet in value. Not only does the film open with a character complaining about Hong Kong’s real estate market being a shell game, it ends with a cathartic climax where each of the main characters scream their gripes about Hong Kong society (bandwagon local sports fans, the lack of parking space for taxis, people who emigrated without taking their pets, etc). The intense and comical emotional release of that sequence felt like the characters were venting on our behalf.
A remake of Korean comedy To Catch a Virgin Ghost (2004) (and its Taiwanese remake Treat or Trick), Ying Chi-wen’s Everything Under Control would be a cult classic in a fair world. But slotted for the Lunar New Year slot, when a wide audience may not be so receptive to absurd set pieces like a drug induced hallucination featuring a kappa, a nian beast and a sexy God of Fortune, Ying’s unabashedly silly farce perhaps pushed the boundaries of mo lei tau a tad too far. Nevertheless, the film landed high on the box office chart due to the Lunar New Year holiday and the popularity of its leading actor, pop star Hins Cheung.
Even more telling about cinemagoing trends in Hong Kong are the films that audiences didn’t flock to. The promise of hometown favourite Chow Yun-fat’s first leading role in five years did not attract enough audience to see Anthony Pun’s old-school, All About Ah Long-esque father- son dramedy One More Chance. The heroic bloodshed formula of Herman Yau’s big-budget undercover actioner The White Storm: Heaven or Hell also failed to connect with audiences. Even Where the Wind Blows, a prestige 1960s police corruption epic with a well-known historical background and a high-wattage cast topped by Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Aaron Kwok, couldn’t bring audiences in, despite director Philip Yung’s sincere and well-argued defense of the film on social media. Not even nostalgia seems to sell movie tickets in Hong Kong anymore.
From the commercial performances of these films, a pattern begins to emerge: while audiences are still flocking to traditional Hollywood event films, many of those who usually see traditional Hong Kong genre films are no longer seeing them in cinemas. On the other hand, those who still go to cinemas for local films are no longer looking for traditional cinematic escapism (like that bakery owner).
Instead, they are cautious, opting to choose examinations of hot-button issues – such as student suicides, real estate prices or the state of local journalism – only if people are actively talking about them.
It’s no coincidence that social media played huge roles in creating awareness for these films. Their target audiences not only want to see local topics specific to their lives reflected in films; they also look for public discourse about those themes at a time when the scope of public discourse is rapidly narrowing in Hong Kong. To them, seeing these films and engaging in conversations about those important issues are their way of engaging in and caring about community issues without having to be involved in politics. With these films continuing to be rewarded with (relative) commercial and critical success, it is likely that we will continue to see younger filmmakers engaging in serious and personal topics in the coming years, thanks to continuing government funding that helps ease the pressure off new filmmakers.
However, as one viral news media article pointed out last year, most of the many filmmakers that made their debut films fully funded under the government’s First Essays Feature Film Initiative have yet to be able to make their follow-up films. Lee Cheuk-pan quickly made his follow-up to G Affairs (2018) with The Fallen (2019), but hasn’t made another film since then (he has reportedly emigrated to Canada).
My Prince Edward (2019) director Norris Wong had to self-fund her sophomore film, The Lyricist Wannabe, using money she earned from other TV work. After years of trying to get funding, In Your Dream (2016) director Tam Wai-ching finally wrapped production on her second film, Someone Like Me, recently. Even though the government’s Film Development Fund continues to provide funding for new filmmakers (with programmes like financial support and the recently wrapped Script Incubation Programme) and highlights nurturing them as a source of pride, questions are arising about whether the industry is healthy enough to support them all.
Though there are not many of them, there are also Hong Kong filmmakers who can still tell their stories despite a lack of access to government funding or large investments.
Norris Wong is among them with The Lyricist Wannabe. So too is Ten Years and Beyond the Dream director Kiwi Chow, whose very apolitical romantic comedy Say I Do to Me was partly funded by Late Show, a streaming platform founded by actor Chapman To. Without local funding that would support a film about refugees in Hong Kong, Lau Kokrui’s The Sunny Side of the Street had a large portion of its funding come from a Malaysian company. Fiercely independent filmmaker Amos Why followed his crowdfunded sleeper hit Far Far Away (2022) with Everyphone Everywhere, a friendship drama that was shot on an even lower budget than its predecessor. Continuing their support of eclectic stories by up-andcoming filmmakers, MM2 funded Nate Ki’s Back Home, a very unusual and allegorical psychological horror film about a young man who returns from abroad and learns the hard way that silence and silent acceptance are the only way to survive the supernatural terrors of his childhood home.
Despite the waning popularity of genre films in general, event films can still bring audiences to local cinemas. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau proved that they are still marquee names with Felix Chong’s The Goldfinger giving the industry a much-needed blockbuster to kick off 2024. Lunar New Year 2024 then saw Sunny Chan’s family comedy Table for Six 2, Yuen Kim-wai’s heist film The Moon Thieves (starring members of super popular pop group Mirror) and Albert Mak’s word-of-mouth hit comedy Rob N Roll returning much-needed crowds to local cinemas.
And this year will bring back even more traditional spectacle-driven genre films, such as Soi Cheang’s long-awaited martial arts thriller Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, Herman Yau’s fiery Customs Frontline, Terry Ng’s mid-budget actioner Ultimate Revenge and Calvin Tong’s police thriller The Trier of Fact. It will be interesting to see how these films hold up against smaller films such as Ho Miu-ki’s First Feature Film Initiative project Love Lies, Sasha Chuk’s award-winning domestic drama Fly Me to the Moon, and YouTuber Trevor Choi’s crowdfunded directorial debut Smashing Frank.
Always treading the thin line between the eclectic and commercial, Johnnie To’s Milkyway Image returned with a vengeance with Soi Cheang’s Mad Fate. Shot during the height of the pandemic in secret (followed by a long post-production period), the film – co-written by Milkyway heir apparent Yau Nai-hoi and Melvin Li – follows a mentally ill fortune teller who fights the divine powers over the fate of a bloodthirsty young man who seems destined to become a murderer. Featuring signature Milkyway Image themes of destiny and coincidence, the hard-to-categorise thriller had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and grossed a decent HK$11.7 million (1.38 million euros) for an 8th place finish at the annual Hong Kong box office. Despite the perceived box office guarantee in the form of Lokman Yeung, a member of local boy band sensation Mirror, it’s understandable that the film’s violent nature and dark themes meant that it was never destined for blockbuster status anyway. Its ultimate message about free will within the constraints of fate also feels like an encouraging message for a dark time.
One 2023 miracle that also deserves mention is Band Four. Directed by Mo Lai and produced by Teddy Robin, the earnest musical family dramedy is about a struggling musician who has to share her home with her estranged father and his younger daughter. Despite a very weak opening weekend, Lai and her co-creator worked hard to promote the film on social media, attended many meet-the-audience sessions (including multiple with audiences only in the single digits) and even held a two-hour walking tour of the film’s shooting locations. As of right now, the film has tenaciously stayed in cinemas for 22 weeks, even though there is only one show a day.
The resilient spirit of Band Four very much represents the spirit of the contemporary Hong Kong film industry. 2023 may not have lived up to the hopes of 2022, but it’s clear that the Hong Kong film industry will always keep soldiering on, however it can.