HKIFF Film Review: Cyclone 超風 (2026) - Hong Kong
Reviewed at the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival 2026
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 8.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
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There is a moment in Philip Yung's "Cyclone" when the title character, played with astonishing grace by Liu Yuqiao, looks into a mirror. She is alone. She touches her face—not with vanity, but with the careful deliberation of someone assembling a self from spare parts. This is what Yung does. He takes the machinery of social realism and tunes it to a frequency that feels almost unbearable. "Cyclone" is likely his most visually provocative since 2015's "Port of Call," and it arrives with the weight of a director who has been watching, waiting, and sharpening his tools in the dark like his 2024’s “Papa”.
The story is simple in outline: a transgender woman from mainland China works as a waitress and many other “jobs” in Hong Kong, saving every dollar for gender-affirming surgery. She moves through the city like a ghost with a pulse—seen by no one who matters, invisible to the authorities, visible only to the predatory and the lost. But simplicity is a trap. Yung's films are never about what they seem to be about. They are about the spaces between the words.
Liu Yuqiao's performance is the kind that makes other actors want to quit. She communicates decades of exhaustion in a single blink. When she is kind to a customer who does not deserve it, you feel the muscle memory of survival. When she allows herself a moment of hope—a new dress, a kind word from a stranger—you brace yourself for the inevitable. Not because Yung is cruel, but because his Hong Kong is a machine that grinds hope into dust.
The supporting cast understands the assignment. Edwynn Li, a stage actor of considerable reputation, plays Bien with the hollowed-out stillness of a man who has already lost everything that mattered. His scenes with Cyclone are masterclasses in indirection—two people circling each other, afraid to touch, more afraid to leave. Jenny Suen brings a jolt of electric life as a friend who refuses to be tragic, and her presence is the film's secret weapon. Without her, the weight might crush the whole enterprise.
Visually, "Cyclone" is not beautiful in the way we usually mean. It is beautiful in the way a bruise is beautiful—precise, honest, and evidence of damage. The cinematography traps you in close quarters. Kitchens steam. Apartments shrink. The city outside is a rumor of neon and rain. When Yung finally lets the camera breathe, late in the film, the effect is almost hallucinatory. You have earned that sky.
The Category III rating is not exploitation. It is testimony. Yung shows you the violence and sex —physical, emotional, bureaucratic—because looking away would be a lie. This is not a film that asks for your pity. It asks for your witness.
Does it go too far? Perhaps. There are stretches where the accumulation of small cruelties becomes exhausting, and I found myself wishing for a single scene where the world relented. But that wish is exactly the point. The world does not relent. Not for Cyclone. Not for Hong Kong. Not for any of us who exist in the margins that polite society pretends are flat.
"Cyclone" ends not with a resolution but with a continuation. A door opens. A face turns. A breath is taken. In a lesser film, this would feel like cowardice. Here, it feels like the only honest answer to an impossible question: How do you keep going when the world refuses to call you back? You keep going. You have no choice. Yung understands this. So will you. (Neo, 2026)