Hong Kong Film Awards 2020 nominations: Better Days, Fagara lead race; Sammi Cheng up for best actress in two films
- Derek Tsang’s drama about schoolyard bullying is pitted against family story Fagara and poverty melodrama I’m Livin’ It for top honours at the Hong Kong awards
- Louis Koo and Aaron Kwok go head to head for the best actor prize, while actress Sammi Cheng could split her vote with nominations for Fagara and Fatal Visit
Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung’s Better Days leads the field for the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards with 12 nominations.
Tsang’s China-set bullying drama is followed by Heiward Mak Hei-yan’s exquisite family story Fagara (with 11 nominations) and Wong Hing-fan’s poverty melodrama I’m Livin’ It (with 10), organisers announced on Wednesday.
A deeply poignant attempt to dramatise China’s widespread problem of schoolyard bullying, Better Days was starved of critical attention last year when the film’s producers were forced to withdraw it from the Berlin film festival in February, and it fell foul of a Chinese boycott of the Golden Horse awards in Taiwan in November.
The 12 nominations it received for the Hong Kong Film Awards – in categories that include best picture, best director, best screenplay, best actor and best actress – will go some ways towards making up for the film’s lost opportunities to grab the spotlight.
The other best picture nominees are gay romance Suk Suk (with nine nominations), Fagara , I’m Livin’ It, and Stephen Chow Sing-chi’s Lunar New Year release The New King of Comedy (three nominations).
Other notable nominees for this year’s awards include the Donnie Yen Ji-dan martial arts vehicle Ip Man 4: The Finale (with nine nominations), relationship drama My Prince Edward (with eight), psychological romance drama Beyond the Dream and twisty crime thriller A Witness Out of the Blue (with six nominations each).