Ant-Man Gets Squashed as Hong Kong’s Movie Revival Follows Covid, Protests

They offer a balm for a city where a once vibrant civil society has been shattered and where families have been torn apart as thousands of Hong Kongers have fled the political, social and economic turmoil.

“It touches on, but doesn’t reveal too much trauma,” Chow said of a shared trait of the new films that he observed. “People need an outlet, and they find that through entertainment, music and movies.”

Two of the four local films in 2022’s top 10 explored rifts in ordinary families. “A Guilty Conscience,” a movie that revolves around redressing miscarriage of justice, became this year’s most-watched film and the highest-grossing Chinese-language movie ever shown in the city, according to Hong Kong Box Office.

Tapping into the traumas from the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the Covid-19 pandemic, films now popular with Hong Kong audiences share intimately local sensibilities and dabble in themes like family and emigration, said local filmmaker Kiwi Chow, who is known for his politically sensitive work. 

The courtroom drama raked in more than four times as much in Hong Kong theaters as Marvel’s latest “Ant-Man” blockbuster, which was showing around the same time.

“It’s a fantasy tale, like a Marvel movie, only it’s about Hong Kong’s legal system,” frequent moviegoer Tong Cho-hau said after seeing the film, referring to its story line in which justice prevails over money and power in a local courtroom. 

Other types of creative works that draw on the recent complexities and turmoil in Hong Kong society—from theater performances and poetry to pop music—have also flourished.

But the films also reflect the chilling impact on creative expression that the sweeping but vaguely worded security law has had; it threatens serious penalties for new, loosely defined offenses. 

Over the weekend, several filmmakers presenting their works at a short film festival replaced many parts of their movies with black frames and muted sound, after censors required the original content to be deleted. One of the disappeared scenes used a news broadcast of a 2019 protest in the background. 

The June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre provided further evidence of how little space is left for public discourse. A screening on that day of “To Be Continued,” a documentary about an iconic Hong Kong impresario from the last century, was canceled to avoid the risk of an unlawful assembly on this sensitive date, the organizer said. The movie had already been shown in theaters. 

In recent years, independent filmmakers have made movies about the 2019 unrest, but they could only be watched online using a virtual private network or shown in private settings. Clandestine screenings were usually followed by discussions between impassioned viewers, film experts and even directors. The fact that these were carried out behind closed doors was a vivid reminder of lost liberties. 

Chow’s latest movie, “Say I Do to Me,” has nothing to do with politics: It is a comedy about a woman’s plan to marry herself. Still, he was relieved that it passed muster with censors—or that it was completed at all. 

Following his documentary on the protests, “Revolution of Our Times,” Chow said he couldn’t find a production company to sponsor his new movie. The documentary, named after a slogan that Hong Kong judges have ruled violates the security law, made its debut at Cannes in 2021—but it was banned in Hong Kong. 

Chow said he was anxious about being arrested during filming of “Say I Do to Me” and lined up another director to take his place if he was. While scouting locations, one potential venue—a church—asked for proof that the movie wouldn’t break the security law. With a budget of just over $1.1 million scraped together from dozens of individuals, many of whom didn’t want their real names in the credits, the movie moved past the censors and was shown in theaters this year. 

The new and often low-budget Hong Kong films are a far cry from the big-ticket, martial-arts and gangster movies of the 1990s and 2000s that won fans worldwide—including some big-name directors. The early-2000s “Infernal Affairs” trilogy—gritty crime dramas that explored betrayal, self-deception and Hong Kong’s fractured identity—inspired Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning “The Departed.” 

Commercial and political pressures looming over the art scene may also make it harder to reach the cinematic heights of Wong Kar-wai’s classics, such as “In the Mood for Love” and “Chungking Express.” Nor do new films feature the same level of irreverence and political satire seen in Stephen Chow’s

Peter Yam, an independent local film producer, noted how many new movies follow plots deeply rooted in Hong Kong’s humbler communities, filmed in areas such as the working-class Sham Shui Po neighborhood. 

“The Sunny Side of the Street,” co-produced by Yam and set in the suburban New Territories, illustrates the entanglement between South Asian asylum seekers and a Chinese taxi driver, who came to Hong Kong decades earlier by swimming across the marine border from the mainland, a hazardous route that many risked for a chance at a better life. While bringing to life the universal sentiment of being uprooted, the award-winning movie digs into margins of society that are less familiar to audiences outside Hong Kong and echoes the mood of a city that has seen many departures.

“Before you knew it, these Hong Kong movies started to have fewer elements related to mainland China,” Yam said. 

In February, more than a year after the revision to Hong Kong’s censorship rules, one of the city’s most influential directors appeared to make a slip of the tongue during a news conference at the Berlin International Film Festival. Johnnie To, who counts Quentin Tarantino as a fan, said totalitarian regimes always target the cinema because it “speaks directly to the audience.” He then said, “I think Hong Kong…” before correcting himself. He then called on all countries and people fighting for freedom to support the film industry.“May You Stay Forever Young,” a feature film about the 2019 protests—as well as several documentaries about the turmoil—couldn’t be shown in Hong Kong cinemas. 

Yam, the producer, said he knew that some of his films would never be shown in Hong Kong, such as an award-winning documentary last year that weaves the 2019 protests together with past unrest—and could only be watched in Hong Kong with a VPN or in private.

Yam compared the different fates of his movies to the diverging paths of two children. 

“One child won a lot of praise and that made me very happy,” he said. “But then, I cannot help thinking that the other child hasn’t been seen.”

Write to Wenxin Fan at [email protected] and Elaine Yu at [email protected]