岁月神偷 | Echoes of the Rainbow

Told through the eyes of sticky-fingered eight-year-old boy Big Ears, Echoes of the Rainbow takes place in a close-knit grassroots community in 1960s Hong Kong. Big Ears’ mother and father run the neighborhood shoe store, and his older brother Desmond  is every family’s dream son – an outstanding athlete with grades worthy of Hong Kong’s best school. Their lives aren’t always happy, but the family sticks together through all the rough times, no matter how bad it gets.

Directed by Alex Law | Starring : Simon Yam, Sandra Ng Kwan Yue, Buzz Chung, Aarif Rahman, Paul Chun | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Changchun Film Festival

一个好爸爸 | Run Papa Run

Run Papa Run is a bit of a different take on the usual Hong Kong gangster movie shenanigans. In the film, Louis Koo plays Lee, a young man who finds father figures in the Triads his mother takes care of in her underground clinic. Despite his mother’s objections, Lee joins the local gang, and soon becomes one of the most powerful gangsters in Hong Kong. However, things are turned upside down for Lee soon after her meets a pretty lawyer named Mabel. After getting Mabel pregnant and marrying her in a shotgun wedding, Lee finds himself wanting to be a “good” Triad for the sake of his daughter, Heiyi. Of course, it isn’t so easy for a hardened gangster to be a nice guy, and Lee must try to balance the needs of both of his “families”.

Directed by Sylvia Chang | Starring : Louis Koo, Rene Liu, Nora Miao, Siu Chung Mok, Suet Lam | Presented at Hong Kong Film Festival

男人四十 | July Rhapsody

Jacky Cheung plays Lam Yiu Kwok, a Hong Kong secondary school teacher who is facing a mid-life crisis. While he has only his pride and Chinese poetry to fall back on, his peers are successful businessmen and professionals who flaunt their extravagant lifestyles at reunion dinners. After all these years, Lam is still living in a modest apartment with his wife, Man Ching and two teenage sons. However financial stagnancy is not his only problem. An old flame of Man Ching (who was the couple’s former schoolteacher) returns to Hong Kong and uncovers old wounds. Man Ching feels obliged to help her ex-lover. Meanwhile Yiu Kwok faces another dilemma: Choy Lam, a precocious student, has a crush on him and the ‘forbidden fruit’ looks more and more tempting in the light of his wife’s ‘infidelity’. Will he succumb to young charms and let history repeat itself?

Directed by Ann Hui | Starring : Jacky Cheung, Anita Mui, Kar Yan Lam, Eric Kot, Shaun Tam | Presented at Changchun Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival