Cosponsors: UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, Pomona College Asian Studies Program, UCI Center for Asian Studies.

This online screening is free and accessible worldwide.
After you register, you will receive an email with links to both the screening and Q&A with directors.
Film Screening [Valid for 24 Hours]

[Pacific Time] October 6, 2021 8PM to October 7, 2021 8PM

[Hong Kong Time] October 7, 2021 11AM to October 8, 2021 11AM

Q&A with Directors

[Pacific Time] October 7, 2021 8PM - 9:30PM

[Hong Kong Time] October 8, 2021 11AM - 12:30PM

About the Film

Bittersweet stories of Hong Kongers contending with nostalgia and an uncertain future give way to a comical documentary assault on sentiment.

Two immigrant Hong Kong women – one from mainland China, one from Indonesia – live together in a little village. They take turns outwitting each other on an epic journey to the big city. Brothers return to their working-class neighbourhood for one last hangout in their mother’s toy store. With new responsibilities looming, they take refuge in behaving like children. A local economics teacher and a "native English-speaking teacher" from the States spend one school year crisscrossing Hong Kong. As they say goodbye, they recall connecting and disconnecting over after-school snacks. A young barista and music-video star puts aside her many interests to run for district council. She fights both a pro-establishment incumbent and her own disdain for human interaction.

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Awards and Festivals

• Best Screenplay, Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards

• International Film Festival Rotterdam (International Premiere)

• Vancouver International Film Festival

• Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival

• Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

• Hong Kong Independent Film Festival

• Jeonju International Film Festival

• New York Asian Film Festival

• San Diego Asian Film Festival

• Warsaw Five Flavours Asian Film Festival

Directors

Leung Ming-kai

(co-director)

is a cinematographer and filmmaker from Hong Kong. Kai has shot more than a dozen celebrated features, including Sylvia Chang's Murmur of the Hearts. Festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, and New York have selected films he shot. Kai’s most recent cinematography effort, Ray Yeung’s Suk Suk, was nominated for Best Picture at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Kai has also directed several short films. Three Boys represented the Philippines in competition at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and won the top prize at the Hong Kong Independent Film & Video Awards.

Kate Reilly

(Co-director)

is an actor and filmmaker from the United States. As an actor, Kate has worked with directors including Anocha Suwichakornpong, John Magary, Lee Chatametikool, and Leung Ming-kai, in films that were selected by Rotterdam's Tiger Awards, Busan, Tribeca, Tokyo, and Edinburgh Film Festivals, as well as HBO’s US Comedy Arts Festival.

Commentator 

Helena Wu

(The University of British Columbia)

is Assistant Professor in Hong Kong Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests revolve around Hong Kong cinema, literature and culture. She is interested in developing interdisciplinary approaches to textual and visual narratives, popular culture, creative industries, and identity studies. In one of her latest projects, she explore film, television and sport spectatorships in post-handover Hong Kong, in order to understand how creative expression and audience activities affect cultural (industry) practices, the construction of identity and the relationship between content producers, distributors, and spectators, and vice versa.

Reviews

“The film acknowledges our difficult situation while refusing to be drowned by sadness. Familiar little pleasures and tiny exchanges of sentiment converge and become something glorious.”

— Best Screenplay, Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards

“Four stories (three fictional, one documentary) show how fiction and fact, humour and drama, the personal and political are complementary facets of the same ever-fascinating, complex, challenging realities that constitute Hong Kong.

Leung Ming-kai and Kate Reilly’s ambitious structural gambit results in a work that delights and gently provokes.”

— International Film Festival Rotterdam

“[The directors] take fun risks here, telling us as much about Hong Kong’s past as its future, and lovingly exploring the corners of the city. Every story, no matter how light, is underlined by the precarious spot Hong Kong sits in today. A delight for anyone who knows it well, and worries about its future.”

— STIR (on Vancouver International Film Festival)

“A sweet-natured, low-key, and downright lovely little film, one of the highlights of the festival.”

— Cinapse (on New York Asian Film Festival)

“With an outsider’s clarity and the sense of humor of an empathetic narrator, the films question and reflect on the burden of nostalgia and the privilege of hope in a restless city.”

— ArtAsiaPacific