Fear and loathing at the cinema: new films reflect modern tensions in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is no longer the same city. That is the thought troubling the 16 minibus passengers and driver who find themselves stranded in a deserted strip of Tai Po after passing through the Lion Rock Tunnel in a scene from the new movie, The Midnight After. They realise that they are the sole survivors of some terrible catastrophe that has afflicted the city.

"While we were going through the tunnel, our city has vanished," screams one passenger played by Kara Hui Ying-hung. "Society's laws, human ethics - they no longer apply."

Director Fruit Chan's post-apocalyptic thriller is the talk of Hong Kong. The film has raked in more than HK$14 million at the box office since it opened on April 10. Based on a hit online novel, Lost on a Red Minibus to Taipo, by a writer who calls himself Pizza, the film adaptation was highly anticipated. The plot - fuelled by local politics and social issues such as anxiety over cross-border relations - has connected with audiences. The passengers' misfortune holds a mirror up to that of ordinary Hongkongers.

"Passengers on the red minibus are trapped. And we are trapped in reality," says the award-winning director Chan. "Many good things about Hong Kong are fading away."

The Midnight After is riding the crest of a wave of recent mainstream Hong Kong movies that reflect the tension surrounding the 17th anniversary of the handover to China and uncertainty about long-promised voting rights. The films deliberately accentuate their "Hongkongness", often making use of colloquialisms, amid growing mainland influence on the city and rising cross-border antagonism.

Some of the films are Hong Kong-mainland co-productions partly funded by a mainland financier.