Can surprise hits and cash boosts revive Hong Kong’s faded film industry?
- Decades on from the local industry’s heyday, small films by debut directors have won attention at home and abroad
- With government funding set to get a cash injection, some see a glimmer of hope for the once-proud local scene
Inside a nearly packed cinema, audiences alternately sobbed and laughed at typical Hong Kong humour as they watched the story of a paralysed and hopeless divorcee who learns to embrace life again after meeting his new Filipino carer, who has put her ambition to be a photographer on hold to earn a living in the city.
Still Human is a low-budget Hong Kong film about rediscovering hope, love and dreams, released in a city enveloped by a growing sense of despair amid heightening political tensions.
Directed by first-time filmmaker Oliver Chan Siu-kuen with a budget of only HK$3.25 million (US$415,600), the low-key drama had no glamorous setting or pulse-quickening storyline.
But the film, which could at least boast award-winning actor Anthony Wong Chau-sang as its star, surprised the industry when it was released this year, taking almost HK$20 million at the box office. It won acclaim locally and globally, netting Chan a best new director title and Wong best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards in April. It also won audience and critics’ awards at the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, in May, where Wong also received an outstanding achievement award.
Some insiders see in this triumph a glimmer of hope for Hong Kong’s movie industry, where for two decades audiences have been dwindling and investments shrinking. It also follows the success of another low-budget film, Men on the Dragon, in a string of socially conscious dramas by home-grown filmmakers.
That film, released in 2018, is a bittersweet comedy about mid-life crises. Like Still Human, it paired a debut director – screenwriter Sunny Chan Wing-sun – with a prolific veteran actor – Francis Ng Chun-yu. It grossed more than HK$15 million.
