Italian Premiere | In Competition
Hong Kong, 2025, 106’, Cantonese
Directed by: Tam Wai-ching
Screenplay: Tam Wai-ching
Cinematography (color): Li Kam-po
Editing: William Chang, Lai Kwun-tung, Tam Wai-ching
Art Direction: Cheung Siu-hong
Music: Kelvin Yuen
Producers: Stanley Kwan, Catherine Kwan
Cast: Fish Liew (Mui), Carlos Chan (Ken), Alice Lau (Mrs Mui), Kate Yeung (Ken’s sister), Polly Lau (Eva), Lam Tze-yuen (Joe)
Date of First Release in Territory: November 27th, 2025
Eight years after debuting with
In Your Dreams (2017), director Tam Wai-ching makes a bold return to film with the story of a woman’s assertion of autonomy and identity. That character is Mui, a 30-something visual artist with cerebral palsy, and in centring the film on her Tam reflects the voices of people with disability and their desires in ways Hong Kong filmmakers haven’t dared to do before.
Though watched over at home by her mother (Alice Lau) and a domestic helper, when out of their sight Mui (Fish Liew) is independent, is exploring sexuality, and keeps up with friends around town. So it comes as a challenge to both self-determination and womanhood when Mum – someone prone to freaking out over her daughter getting hugged by a man – sets a date for Mui to undergo a hysterectomy. As the days count down to the operation, which Mui questions the need for, a wheelchair-bound mate brings up the little-known concept of sex surrogacy.
Immediately Mui’s curious. Sex surrogacy services for people with disabilities to explore intimacy are established in Japan and Taiwan, she’s told, but it’s hard to get a programme going in conservative Hong Kong. Nonetheless Mui manages to connect with bar owner Eva (Polly Lau), who has run the service abroad, and she’s partnered in a hotel room with the experienced Ken (Carlos Chan). The standard limit of sessions is three, and the first encounter is smooth enough – the pair just hold hands and chat. They go further in the subsequent visits, but when they start to bond and Mui asks for more encounters, it emerges that Ken’s life is pretty complex and barriers spring up.
Hong Kong cinema over the past decade has seen no shortage of emerging filmmakers’ films on local social issues. But Tam Wai-ching for her part isn’t merely indulging in an exercise of hand-wringing or narrating a catalogue of hardships.
Someone Like Me takes a compassionate view of Mui and her situation, focused on her intimate challenges and desires, and building up a powerful figure who closes the film with fierce final lines. Tam toys with crosscutting, is cool with culling dialogue for emotionally heavy scenes, and plays with little details (in one scene a nurse speaks to Mui like a child before the patient turns the tables). Tam delves into the psychology of the sex surrogate too as she fleshes him out as a debt-laden man who has faced disability in a loved one before.
Tam needed someone capable of handling the specific physical and verbal demands of playing Mui, and found her in Fish Liew. Through more than a decade in Hong Kong cinema, the actress has been a steadily rising talent, but often in side roles or part of large ensemble casts. This time Liew fronts much of the film, giving an immersive performance that reflects her and Tam’s extensive pre-production research on cerebral palsy. Attention should go to Carlos Chan for capturing the deep complexities of his character too, but it’s hard not to be overshadowed here.
Someone Like Me attracted an adults-only rating when it hit Hong Kong cinemas, limiting its initial reach. But this year’s local award season has been drumming up renewed interest, not least as Liew picks up awards including the Hong Kong Film Critics Society’s Best Actress prize. Tam’s urge to confront taboos, build empathy and give voice to the marginalised, and then bind it all into highly watchable cinema, offers moviegoers a film – and in Mui a strong character – to cheer for.
Tam Wai-ching
Tam Wai-ching, born in Hong Kong in 1984, was a novelist before studying film at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. In 2012 her short film The Little One won the Best Creativity Award in Hong Kong’s Fresh Wave programme, and she entered the film industry as a screenwriter on projects including The White Storm (2013) and Operation Mekong (2016). Tam made her feature directing debut with In Your Dreams (2017).
FILMOGRAPHY
2017 – In Your Dreams
2025 – Someone Like Me