Herman Yau’s filmmaking in We’re Nothing at All is driven by curiosity about how stories move between truth and structure. Fragments of a real case, a few mentions of a policeman and a gay couple found online, became, in his hands, a loose framework to build the story. Instead of making a film strictly based…
Tag: hong kong cinema
28th Far East Film Festival: “I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish” Review
Macau is often shown as a city of bright lights and easy fortune, where casinos rise like temples of luck and excess. But behind the glamour, there is another reality made up of ordinary people living in the shadow of debt and hope. I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish, directed by Chao…
28th Far East Film Festival: “Someone Like Me” Review
For many people with disabilities, intimacy is not simply a private matter; it is influenced by social barriers, misunderstandings, and often, limitations placed on them by others. There is a persistent assumption that people with disabilities are either asexual or should not pursue romantic or physical relationships at all. Families can become overprotective, sometimes out…
50th Hong Kong International Film Festival: “The Black Cannon Incident” Review
The Hong Kong International Film Festival has celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. This year’s special programme, “Revisiting Chinese Cinema: The Beginning of a New Journey,” features a curated selection of Chinese-language films for which HKIFF served as a gateway to international recognition for both the films and their filmmakers. The 1980s were a golden…
50th Hong Kong International Film Festival: “We Are Nothing At All” Review
Between 2023 and 2025, Herman Yau churned out seven China–Hong Kong co-productions and mainland Chinese films, including large-scale, action-packed blockbusters like the gritty customs thriller Customs Frontline (2024) and the trilogy capper The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell (2023). These films demonstrate Yau’s capacity to produce commercially satisfying spectacles with remarkable speed and energy,…
ALULA Film Festival: “Obedience” Review
Based in the heart of Hong Kong, the district of Hung Hom feels like a city within a city, a place where the living and the dead coexist almost side by side. Coffins glide through narrow streets toward nearby funeral homes, while a few steps away, commuters and street vendours fight for space among the…
27th Far East Film Festival: Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement Goes to Tsui Hark
Few filmmakers have left a mark on Asian cinema as deeply as Tsui Hark. A great storyteller and pioneer of modern Hong Kong film, Tsui has long captured audiences’ imagination with his genre-defying style. This year, the Far East Film Festival honours his incredible legacy with the Golden Mulberry Award for Lifetime Achievement, to be…
26th Far East Film Festival “The Goldfinger” Review
Felix Chong’s loose fashioning of the real-life Carrian Group financial scandal of ‘80s Hong Kong into film is a polarising triumph that you’ll either get or you won’t. The Goldfinger has actors Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau reuniting on screen, two decades since their starring together in Internal Affairs (2002)—which, amazingly, was also directed…
26th Far East Film Festival: “Customs Frontline” to Close the FEFF in Udine
The Closing Night of FEFF 26 will begin with the prestigious awarding of Lifetime Achievement Golden Mulberries to both Zhang Yimou and Chiu Fu-sheng, followed by the screening of the restored version of To Live. The festival’s conclusion will feature the world premiere of Herman Yau’s thrilling new action film, Customs Frontline. Herman Yau, screenwriter…
6th London East Asia Festival: “Zero to Hero” Review
Despite social changes and adjustments within professional sport, disabled athletes themselves have been complaining that they are not treated as real athletes but only as those who are in a great need of rehabilitation. This often reflects on sponsorships, government support and endorsements. It is a widely known issue that Paralympians keep trying to bring…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 