Since the turn of the decade, Hong Kong film buffs have been obsessed with Hong Kong’s “urban legend” films – movies that had been waiting for release for so long that people wondered if they actually existed in the first place. According to data from the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency and the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, only 18 films went into production in Hong Kong in 2024. To fill the downturn in productions, several of these urban legend films finally reached cinemas in 2025.
The most anticipated film among them was Sons of the Neon Night, pop star and fashionista Juno Mak’s long-awaited follow-up to Rigor Mortis (2013). With a starry cast led by Kaneshiro Takeshi, Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Gao Yuanyuan, the reportedly HK$400 million (US$51 million) production is a sprawling urban crime epic about the chaos that breaks out when Hong Kong’s drug kingpin is assassinated in a hospital bombing.
Since shooting was completed in early 2018, local media reports of an out-of-control budget and behind-the-scenes discord plagued the film. But enigmatic teasers released on Mak’s social media and the extended delay only amplified anticipation among fans. Finally released in Hong Kong six months after a tepid reception at its Cannes premiere, Hong Kong audiences were divided over the film. Some bashed Mak’s cryptic storytelling as convoluted and confusing, while faithful fans seemed convinced that the theatrical cut’s flaws would be fixed when Mak is allowed to release his rumoured original six-hour cut (the film’s producer later clarified on social media that the first cut was closer to four hours). Nevertheless, most are at least glad that the film is no longer an urban legend.
On the other hand, there was the 2019-filmed Golden Boy, a modestly budgeted boxing drama about a washed-up boxer who returns to the ring for another chance at glory. The film was held in post-production limbo for several years, until its star Louis Cheung, who underwent vigorous physical training for the leading role, finally invested his own money to finish it. The film’s tumultuous journey to cinemas complemented its story of an underdog facing impossible odds, and propelled it to moderate box-office success and a second Hong Kong Film Award Best Actor nomination for Cheung.
Another film that used its urban legend status to its advantage was Patrick Leung’s Ciao UFO, a nostalgic drama about three estranged childhood friends’ rocky path through adulthood in 1990s Hong Kong. After its world premiere at a local film festival in late 2019, the film was trapped in a legal tug-of-war between its investor and its producer, who disagreed about the ideal timeframe to release the film. When the expiration of the investor’s contract finally allowed the film to be commercially released late last year, Leung’s bittersweet story of dashed childhood dreams and the brutality of adult life turned out to be a better fit for 2026 Hong Kong than for 2019 Hong Kong. It depicted a city shrouded in a sense of economic and emotional bleakness similar to that shown in the film. It ended up earning 10 nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
Another urban legend film that had the power of nostalgia going for it was Jack Lai and Ng Yuen-fai’s Back to the Past, the continuation of the hit 2001 TV series A Step into the Past. Starring Louis Koo as a modern-day cop who has lived in the Qin Dynasty for 20 years because of a time travel experiment gone wrong, the film was initially filmed in 2019. However, its release was delayed multiple times until the end of 2025. Hong Kong audiences flocked to watch it, delighted to see the series’ original cast reunite, and thrilled to experience something from a bygone era when Hong Kong’s entertainment industry still made grandiose escapist entertainment for local tastes. The film broke opening-day box-office records and revived interest in the 25-year-old television series.
As I wrote last year, the Hong Kong film industry had been bracing for a harsh 2025, as the continuing economic downturn and shifting audience habits have led to film investors in both Hong Kong and mainland China becoming increasingly cautious. As a result, young filmmakers are forced to follow the Hong Kong mantra of “don’t rush, but make it quick,” delivering quality in half the usual time with half the usual budget.
One film that lives up to that mantra is the comedy Unidentified Murder, the directorial feature debut of television director Kwok Ka-hei and assistant director Jack Lee. Made with HK$3 million (US$383,000) that was reportedly provided by a close friend of the production, Unidentified Murder understandably lacks the usual visual spectacle that a big-budget film might provide. But its tightly constructed rondo-esque script rewards audiences by consistently surprising them with a reveal of each new perspective. It’s no surprise that the film is scooping up screenplay awards even before it is widely released in cinemas. Unidentified Murder is the epitome of the type of inventive filmmaking that Hong Kong creators excel at.
Another new filmmaker demonstrating a talent for making the most out of less is former assistant director Kung Siu-ping, who stretched a modest budget to realise his fantastic vision in Measure in Love. It was a sci-fi romance about a love affair between two people who live in zones where time and gravity operate at drastically different speeds. Meanwhile, directors Veronica Bassetto and Sophie Yang pulled off a minor miracle by finishing their rousing esports drama Gamer Girls with a budget of reportedly only HK$5 million (US$638,000), despite requiring 800-plus special effect shots to bring a video game to life.
On the other hand, by reducing budgets and shooting time, young filmmakers are able to make intimate and personal projects that would be impossible inside the commercial system. Macau’s Tracy Choi, whose directorial debut Sisterhood was also a Hong Kong-Macau collaboration, turned her life story into the pseudo-autobiographical Girlfriends, which used three different actresses (Fish Liew, newcomer Elizabeth Tang and Natalie Hsu) to portray three important periods in a woman’s coming-of-age story. Tam Wai-ching’s Someone Like Me, about a woman with cerebral palsy who asserts her bodily autonomy when she falls for an intimacy volunteer who provides sexual services for the disabled, also stars Liew.
Funded by the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, Sen Lam and Antonio Tam’s Valley of the Shadow of Death features a priest (Anthony Wong) who faces a crisis over sin and forgiveness when his daughter’s rapist joins his church. Unfortunately, Valley was one of the four films that were inexplicably disqualified from Hong Kong Film Awards eligibility, despite meeting all the official criteria for qualification.
2025 was also a banner year for Hong Kong feature-length animation, a field that has been dormant for years (although plenty of excellent animated shorts are made annually under the Animation Support Program). Seven years in the making, Tommy Ng’s Another World premiered at the prestigious Annecy Animation Film Festival in France to positive word of mouth, then came home to become the highest-grossing Hong Kong animated film of all time. Based on the Japanese novel Thousand Year Ghost, the fantasy follows a soulkeeper who must help a young girl overcome the sins and grudges of her past lives in order to lead her to reincarnation. Even though it deals with grim subject matter like war, murder, child labour and even cannibalism, audiences were nevertheless moved by the film’s message of choosing grace over hate and the splendid animation work.
The local animation box office record in Hong Kong was previously held by Toe Yuen’s My Life as McDull, based on Brian Tse and Alice Mak’s iconic cartoon. Six years after his underrated Sherlock Holmes and the Great Escape, Yuen finally returned with A Mighty Adventure. Made with a crew from Taiwan and Malaysia, the dialogue-free film follows three insects’ harrowing journey home after they are transported to the big city. Seamlessly blending animation and real-world elements, the result is a wondrous adventure that turns even the smallest real-life objects into daunting gauntlets for Yuen’s micro-heroes.
Despite the industry’s difficulties in 2025, this year got off to a strong start. Following his record-breaking A Guilty Conscience (2023), writer-director Jack Ng scored another hit with Night King. Similar to the genre of workplace comedies that the Japanese excel in (it even shares a Chinese title with a 2006 Japanese TV series about nightclub hosts), the Lunar New Year comedy follows a nightclub manager (Dayo Wong) who has to get his barely competent staff to shape up and team up with his ex-wife (pop star Sammi Cheng) to save his failing club from a hostile takeover. On the surface, Night King is both a celebration and a requiem of the neon-lit nightclub culture that epitomised Hong Kong’s golden era, but Ng also employs it as a metaphor for both Hong Kong and its troubled film industry. At one point, Wong’s character tells his staff, “The world is tough, but we have to keep on walking.” In the finale, he even assures audiences via voiceover that “as long as everyone needs entertainment and joy, we’ll be waiting.”
Though its raunchy humour may be a little risqué for traditional Lunar New Year family audiences, Night King nevertheless marked the sixth consecutive chart-topping blockbuster for Dayo Wong, the stand-up comedian and former “box-office poison” who has now become the only actor in Hong Kong with real box-office prowess. Bringing his grounded sardonic wit and self-deprecating persona from his hugely popular stand-up acts to the screen, Wong is the unlikely too-cool-for-school hero that Hongkongers want to root for in these cynical times.
Night King’s box office rival during this year’s lucrative Lunar New Year time slot was The Snowball on a Sunny Day, Philip Yung’s comedy about a woman who has to fool her family into believing that they won the lottery after she failed to buy the ticket with the winning numbers. Though its farcical story and family elements make it more like a traditional Lunar New Year comedy on the surface (its premise is similar to that of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, for one), the film touches on serious “inauspicious” themes such as marital discord, dementia and death. Yung and his “executive director” Ho Cheuk-tin (who reportedly handled comedic scenes for Yung) also pack the film with references to Lunar New Year film stereotypes, as well as obscure nods to Hong Kong films such as Taxi Hunter, Viva Erotica and Hidden Heroes. There is also Inside Baseball-esque local film industry gossip (a producer character is rumoured to be based on a real film producer), and even jokes about British football fandom in Hong Kong (a car licence plate features a Cantonese derogatory term about Manchester United fans, for example).
Yung revealed while promoting that film that he partially self-funded Snowball using personal loans. For independent filmmakers who want to retain creative autonomy and avoid risk-averse investors or the long process of securing government funding, self-funding has become an option since the success of Norris Wong’s The Lyricist Wannabe (2023). After years of working on big-budget commercial projects, veteran director Herman Yau fully self-funded We’re Nothing at All, a procedural drama about an investigation into a shocking bus bombing. Despite the presence of pop idols Anson Kong and Ansonbean in leading roles, the film’s downbeat tone, as well as graphic scenes of violence and sex, would have made the film a difficult proposition for commercial film investors.
Nevertheless, Yau pulls no punches on his first fully Hong Kong-funded project since 2016’s The Mobfathers. Chronicling a doomed love affair between a blue-collar worker and an aspiring artist that cannot survive in the pressure cooker that is modern Hong Kong, the film sees Yau criticising his home as a city that, as one character says, “talks liberal, but acts conservative as hell.” Packing in references to local viral memes, stories ripped from headlines and even discontent over a stagnating economy, We’re Nothing at All is an urgent piece of art that truly reflects its moment in history.
As falling audience numbers, shrinking budgets and the tightening of censorship cast a shroud over the film industry, it is hard to predict whether the resilience that Hong Kong’s filmmakers showed this past year, whether by pulling together resources to finish urban legend films, or by setting up as many greeting sessions as possible to encourage cinema attendance, will be rewarded in kind. But Hong Kong cinema has always been about a phrase I first heard in film school: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Kevin Ma