Director

Johnnie To, Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, Ringo Lam, Patrick Tam, Sammo Hung, Yuen Wo Ping

Hong Kong SAR China, China | 2020 | 111min | Cantonese

• Producer Johnnie To,  Elaine Chu
• Production Company Media Asia Films, Milkyway Image (HK) Ltd, Shanghai Hairun Film & TV Production
• Screenplay Wai Ka-Fai
• Cinematography Chien Li Chen, Hang Sang Poon, Wai Kai Tam, Hung Mo To, Man Lung Choi, Chi Kin Julian Cheng
• Editing Mary Stephen Jimmy Hung, Patrick Tam, Allen Leung, David Richardson, Jeff Cheung, Hark Tsui
• Sound
• Cast
• Contacts

  Media Asia Film Distribution

  frederick_tsui@mediaasia.com

About the Film

In a broad sweep of Hong Kong’s history beginning in the 50s and leading up to the present, producer-director Johnnie To assembled 7 key directors to represent their most striking memories. Reminiscent of the classic martial arts biopic Painted Faces (1988) where Sammo Hung won his second Hong Kong Film Awards’ Best Actor prize; the first episode, Exercise, covers this terrain again—but this time as a director. It’s a personal memory of his life as a martial arts student.

Embedded in all these episodes are the values that make up the Hong Kong that its people are fighting for. If hard work and discipline underscored Hung’s story, then Ann Hui’s Headmaster speaks of kindness and knowledge. In her tale, teachers in the 60s nurtured the young with deep hearts. By the 80s, the looming handover of Hong Kong back to China caused an exodus. In Patrick Tam’s Tender Is the Night, a couple is forced to separate when one emigrates with her family. By the 90s, many immigrants who had settled overseas returned to see the land they loved. Martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping's Homecoming shows an aged kung fu master being visited by his favorite grandchild.

The value of money is quite synonymous with Hong Kong, and Johnnie To shows the heyday before the 2008 stock market crash in Bonanza. Tsui Hark helms the final episode, Conversation in Depth, a futuristic comedy that speaks of identity politics. But it’s the penultimate episode Astray by the late Ringo Lam that hits home. Veteran star Simon Yam plays a Hong Kong returnee who can’t recognise the changing landscape of his country. Every landmark from cinemas to streets have been demolished and rerouted to the point that he gets lost in the city he grew up in. No other episode speaks so plainly of the love that its people feel for the land. And the cherished value that his character espouses is that “It’s not that hard to live happily.”

Philip Cheah