For a city handed back and forth between empires, perpetually mid-negotiation about who it belongs to, it makes sense that its cinema became obsessed with the same questions: what do you hold onto when the ground keeps shifting, and who are you when home is a temporary arrangement? Out of that unease came something singular: Ann Hui and the Hong Kong New Wave turning cameras on refugees and domestic workers nobody else was filming, Johnnie To choreographing gunfights with the precision of a ballet master, Fruit Chan finding sly comedy in the city’s slums and back alleys. It is, against all odds, a wildly entertaining body of work built almost entirely out of anxiety. 

Full disclosure, because pretending otherwise would be dishonest: somewhere in the middle of all this sits Wong Kar-wai, a director I have exactly zero critical distance from. I will defend the man’s use of a slow zoom and a sad trumpet solo to the death. There is a very specific kind of person who watched In the Mood for Love once and has spent every year since chasing that particular ache, the cigarette smoke, the wallpaper, the longing that somehow feels better than actual happiness, and I regret to inform you that I am that person. 

Venice, it turns out, has a similar weakness. Since the late 1980s, the festival has handed Hong Kong two Golden Lions, a Best Actress prize, a screenplay award, and one deeply overdue Lifetime Achievement honour, treating the city less like an occasional guest and more like a recurring main character. Below, in chronological order, are the films that made that case, and the directors —some household names, others due for a much bigger one — who built a small, humid city into one of world cinema’s most reliable overachievers. 

The Story of Woo Viet (1981)

Chow Yun-fat, decades before he became the face of Hong Kong action cinema, plays a Vietnamese refugee drifting through the Philippines and eventually the United States, dragged into crime he never asked for while trying to protect the woman he loves. Directed by Ann Hui, this is an early entry in the Hong Kong New Wave and one of the clearest signals that Hui was less interested in genre thrills than in the human wreckage left behind by history, war, and borders — a theme she would, frankly, never let go of. No Venice hardware here, but it’s the earliest title on this list, and a useful reminder that Hui was doing the emotionally unglamorous work of refugee cinema long before it was a festival darling category.

A City of Sadness (1989)

A multigenerational family saga set in Taiwan in the chaotic years following the end of Japanese colonial rule, culminating in the brutal 228 Incident, with Tony Leung as a deaf-mute photographer watching history happen to people who never had a say in it. Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwanese, though the film is inseparable from the Hong Kong star power of Tony Leung, whose performance remains one of the most quietly devastating of his career), it became the first Chinese-language film ever to win the Golden Lion. That win, in 1989, was a watershed moment, not just for the film but for the visibility of Chinese-language cinema on the world stage. 

Days of Being Wild (1990)

Would this really be an article about Hong Kong films without mentioning Wong Kar-wai at least once? A moody, mirror-obsessed playboy in 1960s Hong Kong breaks hearts, chases an absent mother figure, and generally embodies the kind of romantic self-destruction that would become a Wong Kar-wai signature, with Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, and Andy Lau circling each other in various states of longing. This was Wong’s second feature, the first in what would eventually be understood as an unofficial trilogy with In the Mood for Love and 2046, shot by Christopher Doyle doing the neon-and-shadow thing that would later define an entire generation’s idea of what Hong Kong looks like on film. This one never screened in competition at Venice, but its influence on the festival’s later love affair with Wong Kar-wai is impossible to overstate. If you missed it the first (or fifth) time around, the timing couldn’t be better: a 4K restoration is back on the big screen at select Emperor Cinemas venues for select weeks this September, make sure to grab your tickets (and posters) before they sell out!

Ashes of Time (1994)

A wuxia film that treats sword fighting as an afterthought and heartbreak as the main event. Loosely inspired by Louis Cha’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes, it follows a jaded swordsman turned broker connecting assassins with clients in the desert, while everyone around him nurses old wounds and impossible loves. Another Wong Kar-wai and Christopher Doyle collaboration, starring Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung (Chiu-wai and Ka-fai), Brigitte Lin, and Carina Lau. It was a notoriously difficult production, later revisited by Wong Kar-wai himself in a 2008 redux cut. At Venice, the film’s Golden Osella for Best Cinematography went to Christopher Doyle, proof that even a film about swordsmen can win on vibes alone. 

Throw Down (2004)

A washed-up former judo champion turned karaoke bar owner gets dragged back into the ring (sort of) by a stubborn young judo hopeful and an aspiring singer, in a loose, jazzy homage to Akira Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata. Johnnie To, Hong Kong’s reigning master of stylish genre filmmaking, directs Louis Koo and Aaron Kwok in a film that’s structurally looser and more meditative than To’s crime thrillers, though no less confident. It never competed at Venice, but remains a beloved cult favourite among cinephiles who prefer their To films melancholic rather than trigger-happy.

A World Without Thieves (2004)

Two professional thieves, a couple, plan one last con before going straight. When a naive young migrant worker crosses their path, carrying his life savings from a rival gang of pickpockets, their consciences (and their competitive streaks) get tested instead. Directed by Feng Xiaogang, starring Andy Lau and Rene Liu, with Ge You stealing scenes as the rival gang leader, this is a mainland-Hong Kong co-production that leans more crowd-pleaser than art house, blending heist mechanics with surprisingly sincere sentimentality. It never competed at Venice, but was a massive box office success across Chinese-language markets and a title that helped cement the increasingly blurred lines between Hong Kong and mainland commercial cinema. 

Exiled (2006)