Independent director and screenwriter Ray Yeung's poignant drama Suk Suk, also known as Twilight’s Kiss, shook up the local entertainment scene with its portrayal of romance between two men in their twilight years. In the story, Pak and Hoi, two middle-aged Hong Kong men who are married with children, fall in love after meeting in a park and contemplate the possibilities of a future together.

In 2019, Yeung was awarded the Artist of the Year (Film) prize by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. In 2020's Hong Kong Film Awards, he won Best Director, while Tai Bo, who played Pak, won Best Actor.

The Sunny Side of the Street, a drama directed by Lau Kok Rui, tells the story of a taxi driver, played by Anthony Wong, who forms an unexpected bond with a Hong Kong-born Pakistani boy, portrayed by Sahal Zaman—after accidentally causing the death of the boy’s father.

Wong won Best Actor at the Golden Horse Awards in 2022 for his convincing portrayal of the regretful taxi driver, while Zaman, who was ten when the film was released, became the first person of Southeast Asian heritage to win Best Supporting Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2023. 

In case you missed: Hong Kong Film Awards 2023: From Sammi Cheng’s emotional Best Actress win to Sean Lau’s third Best Actor award, here’s what you missed

In Still Human, a comedy-drama written and directed by Oliver Siu Kuen Chan, Anthony Wong plays a paralysed man, who develops a friendship with a domestic worker he employs, played by the Filipina actress and singer Crisel Consunji. The film underlines the challenges and stereotypes domestic workers face in Hong Kong.

Director and screenwriter Jun Li’s Drifting is a poignant story inspired by a 2012 Hong Kong court case involving a group of homeless individuals in Sham Shui Po and the Hong Kong government, after the former were evicted from their makeshift shelters. In the film, the group—portrayed by Golden Horse Best Actor Tse Kwan-ho, Francis Ng and Rachel Lee—find the wooden huts they live in under a flyover cleared away by the authorities without notice, and enter a lengthy legal battle to demand compensation and an apology. It spotlights the struggles and injustice faced by those who are homeless.

The coming-of-age drama Fly Me to the Moon by screenwriter, director and actress Sasha Chuk Tsz-yin is an adaptation of her Chinese-language semi-autobiographical novella. The film follows a young girl, who moves from mainland China to Hong Kong, and who strives to find happiness while coping with feeling like an outsider.

In The Narrow Road, Hong Kong singer-songwriter and actor Louis Cheung plays a man who struggles to keep his cleaning company afloat during the pandemic. He hires a cleaner, played by Angela Yuen. As he learns more about Yuen, a single mother trying to make a better life for her daughter, the two develop a bond. They work together to overcome their financial struggles and heavy social and familial expectations. For their roles in the film, Yuen and Cheung were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2023.

In this heartwarming movie by Ka Sing-Fung, Sammi Cheng plays a grieving mother, who loses her three-year-old son to illness. She and her husband find meaning in life again after becoming foster parents in a Yuen Long village. Cheng as a struggling foster mother is a departure from the rom-com roles she was known for in the 2000s. Her moving performance brings the audience into the world of foster parents and children, something that’s rarely seen on screen in Hong Kong.

For her role in the film, Cheng won Best Actress at the 2023 Hong Kong Film Awards.

The Sparring Partner details the harrowing real-life story of the murderer Henry Cheung, who along with a friend, killed, dismembered and disposed of Cheung’s parents. While the film features gory content, its director Ho Cheuk-tin, who won Best New Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2023 for the flick, puts an emphasis on painting the murderers’ psychological conditions, which were shaped by social expectations and family pressures, as well as the subsequent trial, which challenges the jury’s sense of morality.

As well as Best New Director, the film also received Best Newcomer and Best Film Editing at the Hong Kong Film Awards 2023.

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