Third Culture Film Festival, Hong Kong Showcase 2026 - Hong Kong Shorts 1 (Soho House, 28-30 August 2026)
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
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Short Film Review: Boju (2024) - Hong Kong / Nepal
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
A boy grows up in the care of his grandmother in Hong Kong while his mother works. Phileas Rai’s camera is tender rather than sentimental. The film understands that resilience in a working-class Nepali-Hong Kong household is not a speech but a series of small, stubborn acts — cooking, waiting, keeping the façade intact. It is loosely autobiographical and feels lived-in rather than constructed. The ending does not resolve so much as it honours the next generation’s quiet determination. A modest, affecting tribute.
What stays with you is the grandmother’s face when she thinks no one is looking. Rai does not underline the sacrifice; he simply lets the rooms feel slightly too small and the light a little tired. The film trusts that we will recognise the cost without being told. That trust is its best quality.
The tribute never turns into a eulogy. Rai keeps the boy’s point of view slightly off-centre, so we feel both the safety of the grandmother’s care and the knowledge that it cannot last forever. A few scenes run long, but the extra seconds are where the film’s honesty lives. You do not leave thinking about “the immigrant experience.” You leave thinking about a specific kitchen.
(Neo, 2026)
Short Film Review: Travelling on the Night Tube, Thinking about Lemon Iced Sugarless Tea 遊龍戲鳳茶少甜 (2025) - Hong Kong / UK
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Two young Hong Kongers meet on a late London tube. She is looking for iced lemon tea with less sugar; he does not ask why. Their conversation drifts between memory and loss as the train slides through a sleeping city toward Heathrow. Michael Mui has a light touch with the specific and the unspoken. The film is slight in incident but precise in mood — the particular loneliness of people who have already left one home and have not yet arrived at the next. It ends on the right question.
The tea order is the kind of detail that sounds trivial until you realise it is the only thing she can still control. Mui never explains the joke or the wound behind it. He just lets the fluorescent light of the carriage do the work. By the time they reach the airport the film has become a small study in how two people can sit side by side and still be travelling in different directions.
Heathrow is the correct last stop. Not because the film needs a symbol, but because airports are where conversations like this usually die. Mui is wise enough not to give them a hug or a revelation. He gives them a platform and a departure board. That restraint is what makes the short feel longer than its running time, in the good way.
(Neo, 2026)
Short Film Review: Sweet Bittersweet 情人黑森林 (2025) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Envy works in a bakery. Her old crush walks in. She bakes him a cake and, while doing so, slips between fantasy, desire and the memory of what love was supposed to feel like. Nicolee Tan lets the baking itself become the drama — the kneading, the waiting, the private theatre of hope. The film is sweet without being sticky and bittersweet without self-pity. It knows that idealism about love is both necessary and slightly ridiculous, and it lets the night decide which one wins.
The cake is less a gift than a rehearsal. Watch Envy’s hands: they know the recipe better than they know the man. Tan is smart enough not to punish her character for hoping. The closing minutes have a quiet cruelty that feels earned rather than imposed. You leave thinking about the difference between baking something beautiful and being able to eat it.
Fantasy sequences in shorts often look like student-film wish-fulfilment. These do not, quite. They have the slightly sticky lighting of a shop after closing, which is exactly right. Tan understands that desire in a confined space is both comic and sad. The film’s best joke is that the crush may not even remember the recipe she is trying to perfect for him.
(Neo, 2026)
Short Film Review: From Hong Kong Raufarhöfn to the Birthday Archives (2024) - Hong Kong / Iceland
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Two people who share a birthday travel, nine years apart, to the same remote Icelandic village. Colleen Kwok uses the coincidence as a way to think about diaspora at different stages of life. The film is more essay than story, and some of the connections feel asserted rather than discovered. What stays with you is the odd intimacy of two very different landscapes occupying the same date. It is thoughtful, a little schematic, and quietly moving when it stops explaining and simply looks.
The strongest passages are the ones that refuse to make the two journeys rhyme too neatly. A birthday is an arbitrary hook; Kwok almost admits as much. When the film lets the wind and the empty road speak instead of the voice-over, it finds a loneliness that does not need a thesis. Those moments are worth the rest.
Raufarhöfn is so far north that the place itself does half the directing. Kwok is good at weather and bad at transitions. The cut between Hong Kong and Iceland sometimes feels like a caption rather than a thought. Still, the idea of two people carrying the same calendar date into such different cold is lovely enough to justify the trip.
(Neo, 2026)
Film Review: The Buraq That Can’t Fly 不會飛的鳳凰 (2024) - Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★
In bustling Hong Kong, Ayesha films her family on a DV camera while trying to reconcile faith, motherhood and a conservative neighbour. The mythical Buraq becomes her metaphor for a freedom she cannot quite claim. Zeeel’s film has sincerity and a few strong images, but it tells us its themes more than it dramatises them. The neighbour’s criticism feels like a device; the family’s daily life is more interesting than the lecture it is asked to support. Decent, earnest, not fully airborne.
The home-video footage of the child is better than the surrounding argument. Zeeel has an eye for the ordinary sacred — a meal, a glance, the way a mother holds a camera as if it might protect her. If the film had stayed inside that footage instead of reaching for myth and confrontation, it might have flown farther. As it stands, you respect the intention more than the flight.
The Buraq legend is beautiful and, here, a little heavy for the frame. Myths work in shorts when they leak into the room; they sag when they are announced. Ayesha’s camera is the real flying creature in this film. Every time Zeeel returns to it, the short becomes simpler and better. The neighbour could have been a look through a window instead of a scene.
(Neo, 2026)