Soi Cheang Pou-soi’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In has been voted the best Hong Kong film of 2024 by a panel of critics, the Hong Kong Film Critics Society announced on January 13.
The best director prize went to Philip Yung Tsz-kwong for Papa, a heart-wrenching family drama based on a gruesome real-life killing in Hong Kong. Lau Ching-wan, who plays the father of a teenage boy who killed his mother and younger sister in the film, was named best actor.
Long-time assistant director Albert Mak Kai-kwong won the best screenplay honour for the darkly comic crime drama Rob N Roll, which he co-scripted with two others. The film, which was released over the Lunar New Year holiday in 2024, charts the criss-crossing paths of several robbers and robbers-to-be.
The best actress category looks to be one of the most hotly contested fields in years at the upcoming Hong Kong Film Awards, and Hedwig Tam Sin-yin struck an early win for her role in Montages of a Modern Motherhood as a working-class mother struggling to cope with the pressure put on her by both family and society.