Director/Writer Fruit CHAN; Producers Andy LAU, Doris YANG, SHU Kei; Dirs. Photography O Sing Pui, LAM Wah Chuen; Editor TIN Sam Fat; Sound YUNG Chi Chung; Cast Sam LEE, Neiky YIM, Wenbers LI, Amy TAM

Voted Best Picture at the 17th Hong Kong Film Awards, Fruit Chan’s shoestring-budget meditation on the 1997 handover catapulted both him and his lead actor, Sam Lee, to the front ranks of emerging stars. Yet even as MADE IN HONG KONG’s achievements inspire hope in a troubled independent film scene, the movie itself paints a far from optimistic vision of an underclass teeming with abandoned wives and children, high school dropouts, and teenage boys scrambling for gang membership.

A model citizen by default within this violent tenement world, Autumn Moon (Lee) only kills time—playing basketball, reiterating arguments with his mother, collecting debts for the triads—as he repeatedly refuses more lucrative if bloodier assignments. When he happens upon two suicide notes from a girl who jumped to her death, Moon becomes obsessed with her and decides to deliver the letters to their addressees. In the process, he learns that another girl he likes will die unless she undergoes a costly kidney transplant and consequently resorts to uncharacteristic extremes to ensure the operation will happen. As much a dedication to youth as it is social commentary, MADE IN HONG KONG articulates the confusion and helplessness of growing up in a post-1997 Hong Kong, where patricidal impulses dictate the daily grind and the only epiphanies to be found are in cemeteries.

—Kevin Sun

Presented with Giant Robot