Happy Valley

The story of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, told through a series of demonstrations by local protestors that escalate into conflict when highly armed police appear on the scene.

“Umbrellas Move” is a long feature documentary capturing scenes from Hong Kong’s city-wide protest, the occupy movement in 2014. This documentary witnessed a critical page of Hong Kong after transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain to China. Around 1200 thousand people have involved in this longest occupation in the history of Hong Kong in 2014. 79 days of occupation, Hong Kong people are fighting for their rights to vote under a fair election in order to be against the political controls from China.

The documentary offers a glimpse into the life of a farmer who worked in the fields with his father when he was young. After spending time in the city as an adult, he returns to the countryside to take over the family’s business and learns the essence of making a living from the land.

Heart Murmurs is a poetic dialogue between the filmmaker and Dean, a young man living in Hong Kong. In reflecting on his experience living with a congenital disability and HIV during the first years of the COVID pandemic, Dean expresses his sense of self in the face of regular medical challenges.

A loose collection of scenes in Hong Kong shot over a five-year period, this film begins with the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and ends right before the summer of 2019, when large-scale social unrest and violent resistance erupted. The everyday scenes capture the ambience and the landscape of change in the city, standing as a quiet prelude to the ensuing conflicts.

The first feature-length documentary to explore the career of Stephen Chow; featuring collaborators, critics, and academics. Produced for the Shout Factory release of his classic work on Blu-ray, "The Stephen Chow Collection" released in 2024. Fans will learn how Chow went from Hong Kong's TVB to feature film riches, with his peculiar brand of localized comedy, to becoming one of the most successful brand names in Mainland China, including the blockbuster reception for his comedy "The Mermaid" in 2016.

HongAFI nominated director, Charlie Hill-Smith’s first documentary, is a telling insight into the complexities that face modern China. In 1997 the most free market city of earth was consumed by the last great communist state, but who is China? What is China? Travel from Hong Kong to Beijing to Tibet to grab a warts and all snap shot of the Middle Kingdom as it rises to become the great power of the twenty first century.

A homage to the social housing architecture that is so atypical of Hong Kong - especially the Kwai Shing West Estate. About half of the population lives in such building complexes, where one experiences a strong sense of loneliness. The neighborhoods are the scene of modern living conditions, but also of social protests, which have been punishable by life imprisonment in Hong Kong since 2020 due to a new law.

Young people are protesting on the streets of Hong Kong in order to bring about change. Air soaked with tear gas, the dark uniforms and loud commands of the police officers in the colourful umbrella sea of the protesters. In the midst of the action, the film documents a brand new protest movement.

An asylum seeker from Hong Kong builds a new life for himself in Glasgow, using his passion for street food to maintain his cultural identity.

Hong Kong is facing tyranny, and a pair of brothers are marching on their own ways in the revolution. However, the horror is approaching, and it’s like this city knows everything, it reborns after it collapses. There seems to be a huge energy behind this, asking inwardly: What is the fight for?

Hong Kong ne répond plus

Although the Chinese government promised that Hong Kong would retain separate status until 2047, in recent years the Chinese state has consolidated its power over the metropolis. Large-scale protests by the populace have been brutally suppressed. This mix of documentary, fiction, and visions of the future reveals the current state of desolate depression among the people of Hong Kong. “A desperate attempt to capture the final moments of a sinking island”, as maker Chan Tze-woon himself puts it.

M+, Hong Kong's museum for visual culture, presents a video on the making of neon signs. Get to know how neon signs are made as the masters go through the production processes from design, tube bending, gas filling and more. A documentary covering the current situation and challenges of the industry in Hong Kong behind the glowing neon signs. Produced by M+, WestK as part of "NEONSIGNS.HK" — an online exhibition on Hong Kong's neon signs.

At the forefront of most of Hong Kong's demonstrations, 'frontliners' (aka 'the valiant', yung mo in Cantonese) are the black-clad, masked, often armed youth willing to use violence against the HK government and its heavily-armed police force. Willis Ho's remarkably revealing doc approaches from the inside, giving them voices and offering understanding, not judgment.

Tells the story of how Edward Snowden managed to evade capture by the US. For the first time Snowden tells the story of how he managed to escape so that not to have to spend the rest of his life in an American prison.

A poetic, experimental portrait of four Hong Kong women in London working to digitise records of the handover agreement between the United Kingdom and China. Impressionistic and precise, personal and expansive, Cheung's elegant, eloquent work decodes history and how politics are enacted.

Having devoted much of his career to programming and film history research, Law Kar, a.k.a. Uncle Kar, places himself before the camera for the first time. This nostalgic trip down memory lane, as he recounts his personal and cinematic experiences, from film criticism, experimental filmmaking to auditioning for Federico Fellini, cumulates in a brief history of Hong Kong cinema itself. Reflecting on the past 80 years, Law Kar's affectionate documentary sheds light on local movies and Chinese cinema, brooding over the socio-political transformation of our perplexed city, as the restless cinephile ponders the role cinema and art play in times of crisis.

A single shot, taken during a confrontation between police and demonstrators in Hong Kong's Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, transforms a street confrontation into something transcendently beautiful. The voice of Louis Armstrong adds a level of almost unbearable irony.

The motions and gestures of military riot police, slowed down while performed by dancers, are surprisingly beautiful. Menace and violence estranged from context and time looks eerily strange, and all too familiar. In this gallery piece, Isaac Chong Wai somehow anticipates, a year early, key images of the Hong Kong protests.