On an uneventful Sunday afternoon in mid-November five years ago, the low-budget anthology Ten Years was screened for the first time in front of a cinema audience in the “Centrepiece” sidebar of the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. Consisting of five short films, each directed by a budding local filmmaker, Ten Years painted a grim picture of life in the city in 2025 and quickly became the talk of the town. Audiences and critics were awed by their dystopian vision of the city’s future under greater Chinese rule. The fact it went on to win the best picture prize at the 2016 Hong Kong Film Awards only added to the film’s unlikely legacy. But the accolades and wonderful reception from the community also came at a great cost. After making the film that Global Times , China’s official daily mouthpiece, later criticised as “scare-mongering absurdity” , the directors of Ten Years became unwelcome in the mainstream film business. One told the Post he had to borrow money just to get by after investors balked at financing his films. Another has recently left Hong Kong altogether in protest against the new national security law. The filmmakers believe the blowback they received for making Ten Years shows that the room for making political films in Hong Kong has shrunk to nothing, forcing many local filmmakers to make harmless, insipid fare just to get by. Such a helpless scenario mirrors the plot of Dialect , one of the five short films in Ten Years . Its director Jevons Au Man-kit, who has since emigrated to Canada, says that many Hongkongers have been reduced to a similar fate to the taxi driver character in his short, who can do nothing but endure the increasing prevalence of Mandarin and the fading of his Cantonese identity, all in the name of making ends meet in the city. “They were forced to remain silent for the sake of their living,” says Au. “For Ten Years , we fleshed out a [grim] future that we didn’t want to see. But our making the film and the audience seeing it have failed to prevent this future from happening in the end.” Having witnessed key events unfold in real life over the past five years in a similar trajectory to those foretold in Ten Years – such as anti-government protesters’ storming of the Legislative Council; and the death of anti-government protester Marco Leung Ling-kit in 2019 – commentators have described the filmmakers as prescient clairvoyants who have given spot on predictions of the city’s future in their 2015 production. Ng Ka-leung, the producer who came up with the idea for the film and directed the Local Egg segment, told the Post in 2015 that he had the idea for the project way before the umbrella movement started in September 2014. “I had the idea [after] the [2012] national education controversy, which showed that the next generation are at risk of ideological indoctrination,” he said in the interview. Scenes in Ten Years that closely resemble future real-life events also include police tear-gassing protesters and hitting one with his truncheon until his head is covered in blood in the Self-Immolator segment, directed by Chow Kwun-wai, and the ending of the Extras segment, directed by Kwok Zune, where a newsreader announces that national security apparatus has to be instantly activated due to infiltration by foreign subversive forces in Hong Kong. Ng says the mere fact their stories have come true is already more absurd than the film itself. “ Local Egg portrays the [exploits of] little red guards [in Hong Kong]. The recent incident in which a teacher had his licence permanently revoked for discussing independence in a classroom is redolent of the extermination style heralded by the Cultural Revolution; people get heckled and eliminated just because of their differing political views. According to Ng, what has transpired in Hong Kong shows that “police and the government won’t reflect on their actions. The situation will only get worse. It is only the start of the dark age.” Wong Fei-pang, whose Season of the End segment explores the death of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage in the midst of rapid modernisation, says that there has been no progress made in environmental conservation or other social issues in the city over the past five years. “Many problems like unequal [allocation of resources], and white elephant infrastructures like [the plan to build] artificial islands in East Lantau, still exist,” he explains. In response to rising public discontent, Ng has continued to make political works, including a series of short films appealing to the public to protest against the 2019 extradition bill (withdrawn by the government following months of protests), which would have allowed Hong Kong to transfer suspects to jurisdictions with which it lacks extradition agreements, including mainland China. Ng also produced Kwok Zune’s Night Is Young , which was nominated for best live-action short film at this year’s Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, the winners of which will be announced on November 21. Kwok’s film portrays the tumultuous upheavals in Hong Kong in 2019 through the perspective of a taxi driver. Kwok declined the Post ’s interview request for this report, but he told Stand News in June that if he has to make a sequel to Ten Years , he might want to imagine what modes of independence protesters want to pursue, and the situation of his pro-democracy compatriots who have been exiled from Hong Kong or are in prison. Like Kwok, Ng feels much more passionate about making political movies than mainstream ones. “Commercial is not a route I pursue,” he says. “I long ago foresaw the [blowback] that will come with making Ten Years . The film investment industry in Hong Kong has become sickly due to the many taboos [that filmmakers have to avoid]. I will continue making independent films, and try to survive in the crevices [of light] among the darkness.” This kind of commercial backlash has hit Chow Kwun-wai harder. Referring to his segment Self-Immolator , which depicts an activist’s hunger strike and how it serves a purpose in the cause of civil disobedience, making Ten Years has similarly proved a self-immolating act for Chow. “In this age where mainland-Hong Kong co-productions are in vogue, making Ten Years has burned [my bridges with the] mainland market,” he says. “Hong Kong investors and actors balk at cooperating with me. I prepared for a year for a new film that contains sensitive elements. The investors quit midway, leaving the project aborted. It severely affects my livelihood. “I have had times when I have to borrow money just to scrape by. I didn’t have any new movies released for four years [after the release of Ten Years ]. My new film Beyond the Dream just came out in July.” Devoid of political content, Beyond the Dream is a psychodrama about a primary teacher suffering from psychosis who is searching for love. Chow co-wrote the screenplay, which has been nominated in the best adapted screenplay category at the 2020 Golden Horse Awards. The film was a commercial hit, in part thanks to online calls by protesters to support Kwok at the box office. Meanwhile Au, who has left Hong Kong for good, followed up his Ten Years success with the crime thriller Trivisa (2016), also a Hong Kong Film Awards best picture winner; and social drama Distinction (2018), about special needs education. He says his future works might explore the stories of Hong Kong people in foreign lands. “Canada is a completely strange place for me,” says Au. “If not for the [implementation] of the national security law, I wouldn’t have left. I had previously gathered 10 directors to make a film portraying [Hong Kong’s] social movements over the past year, but the crowdfunding of the project would break the law [after the national security law was introduced]. “I cannot do anything with the law in place. I felt a lot of psychological pressure when I was in Hong Kong. Now I feel much more relaxed.” Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook