Hong Kong Film Awards 2020 winners: Better Days takes eight prizes, including best picture, director, screenplay and actress
- Better Days, Derek Tsang’s second solo outing as director, triumphs in the delayed awards, after being denied the chance to compete at two film festivals
- Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee rewarded for gritty performances in Tsang’s film; Tai Bo wins best actor for his role as an elderly gay man in heartbreaking Suk Suk
China-set bullying drama Better Days dominated the 2020 Hong Kong Film Awards. Emerging director Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung’s film won in three of the top four categories and bagged a total of eight prizes.
The winners were announced in a live stream on social media channels on Wednesday, organisers having been forced by the coronavirus pandemic to scrap the usual star-studded awards ceremony for the first time in the competition’s 39-year history. The awards are usually announced in April.
It took Hong Kong Film Awards chairman Derek Yee Tung-sing, dressed in a tuxedo, a mere 11 minutes to name the winners in 19 categories.
Just the second feature film for which Tsang has sole directing credits, Better Days, which had been nominated in 12 categories, won best film, best director, best actress and best screenplay, and the awards for best cinematography, original song, costume and make-up design, and new performer (Jackson Yee). The first film Tsang directed, Soul Mate , received 11 nominations in the awards’ 2017 edition, but took home only one prize.
Starring Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee in leading roles, Better Days is a deeply poignant drama about an underprivileged student who becomes the target of vicious schoolyard bullying in China, and the orphaned street punk she befriends and slowly falls in love with.