桃姐 | A Simple Life

Based on a true story, the film centres on Ah Tao, an amah who has worked for the Leung family for four generations. She lives with and takes care of Roger, a film producer who is the only member of the Leung household still living in Hong Kong. Roger returns home one day and finds Ah Tao unconscious after a stroke. Convinced she has becoming a burden, Tao resigns and moves into a retirement home. But upon her arrival, she continues to be taken care of by Roger, who realizes just how important she is to him. He decides to do his best to watch after the person who has nurtured him all his life. But Ah Tao’s health is fast deteriorating. Hui has always excelled when telling stories of everyday life. In A Simple Life, she delivers a rich and heartwarming drama that not only deals with the many abandoned old people in Hong Kong, but also exquisitely captures the unique relationship between the amah and the family for which she cares. In an age when loyalty between employers and employees is fast disappearing, A Simple Life highlights a culture that has almost ceased to exist in Hong Kong: one in which a person devotes their life to serving a family, and in return is cherished as much as any other relative.

Directed by Ann Hui | Starring : Andy Lau, Deannie Yip, Hailu Qin, Fuli Wang, Paul Chun | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Dubai Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Okinawa Film Festival, Durban Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Portland Film Festival

将爱情进行到底 | Eternal Moment

China, the modern day. I: Yang Zheng recalls how he graduated in 1999, contacted his onetime college girlfriend Wenhui in the US in 2001 and married her when she returned to China in 2003. Since he has become a successful CEO, she has become a full-time housewife. But one evening, when he comes home intending to watch his favourite sports programme on TV as usual, suddenly he doesn’t recognise the woman he married. And when he moves out to a hotel, she doesn’t come looking for him. II: Wenhui, divorced and with two young twin sons, is working as a shopgirl in Shanghai, while Yang Zheng, about to be divorced, is a car mechanic in Beijing. Neither has seen the other for over a decade, but they both attend a 10th anniversary college reunion in Shanghai organised by their friend Jiawei. They end up spending a whole night together, recalling past times and re-igniting old fires. III: Yang Zheng traces a drunken happy-birthday call from Wenhui to Bordeaux, and flies from Beijing to see her for the first time in over a decade. At Bordeaux train station, Wenhui is waiting to welcome Chuchu, the mistress of her boss Pan Xiao,  head of specialist wine retailer YH Global. Wenhui introduces Yang as her boyfriend. She later tells Yang that Pan is actually her husband, not her boss. With Pan temporarily away, Wenhui, Yang and Chuchu spend time together.

Directed by Yibai Zhang | Starring : Jinglei Xu, Yapeng Li, Xuebing Wang, Chapman To, Jie He | Presented at N/A

停车 | Parking

On Mother’s Day in Taipei, Chen Mo makes a date for dinner with his wife, hoping to bring their estranged relationship back together. While buying a cake on his way home, a car unexpectedly double parks next to his car, preventing his exit. For the entire night, Chen Mo searches the floors of a nearby apartment building for the owner of the illegally parked car, and encounters a succession of strange events and eccentric characters: an old couple living with their precocious granddaughter who have lost their only son, a one-armed barbershop owner cooking fish head soup, a mainland Chinese prostitute trying to escape her pimp’s cruel clutches, and a Hong Kong tailor embroiled in debt and captured by underground loan sharks. After many hardships, Chen Mo finally gets his car out of the parking space, and, with new friends riding beside him, advances toward a new horizon in life.

Directed by Mong-Hong Chung | Starring : Chen Chang, Gwei Lun-Mei, Leon Dai, Chapman To, Jack Kao | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival

伊莎贝拉 | Isabella

On the eve of Macau’s handover to China, police officer Shing is having the worst time of his life. Suspended for suspected corruption, he tries to find solace with an elfin creature by the name of Yan, whom he just picks up. As he tries to smooth-talk her to bed, she suddenly snaps back with the biggest turn-off imaginable: that she is the daughter he never knew existed!While Shing desperately tries to hold himself together, his bachelor life inevitably falls apart as Yan insists on living under his roof. Together the two of them start roaming through exotic Macau, tracking down Yan’s missing puppy and striving to acquaint with each other. No sooner has Shing grown into his new role as a father than he finds his hands full: when Yan is not fighting with his girlfriend Kate, she is being bothered by her dorky classmate Fai.

Directed by Ho-Cheung Pang | Starring : Isabella Leong, Chapman To, Josie Ho, Kwok Cheung Tsang, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Fantasia Film Festival