Director Patrick Tam Kar-ming will return to the local film scene after a 17-year hiatus, with After This, Our Exile - his first movie since 1989's romantic drama, My Heart is That Eternal Rose.
Starring Golden Horse best actor Aaron Kwok Fu-shing (Divergence) and Charlie Young Choi-nei (Seven Swords), Exile - set for release in August - tells the story of a father and son's turbulent relationship.
Tam, an assistant professor at City University's school of creative media, said the script was a project his students worked on about eight years ago when he ran a scriptwriting course in Malaysia. 'We kept revising and enriching the script,' Tam, 58, said. 'By the time we started filming, it was a complete story.'
Tam, who taught director Wong Kar-wai, won the 1994 Golden Horse best editing award for Wong's Ashes of Time. He's also been nominated for the best editing award at this year's Hong Kong Film Awards for Johnnie To Kei-fung's Election.
Tam (left) said one of the reasons Exile didn't start filming until this year was because he hadn't sought an investor. 'It's the right climate and timing now,' he said. 'You have to be serious about movie-making and you can't rush.'
The director said he had lots of promising scripts from his classes in Malaysia. 'We'll wait for the right timing and right people to commit to them,' he said. 'It's meaningless if we do it in a rush. It's not going to be good and people won't go to see it.'