About the Film
Director
Brian Hung
Country
Hong Kong
Year
2026
Program
EMW 2
Curated by
MAiFF Programming Team
Description
Synopsis | After the family of three moved into the community, the middle-aged unemployed father Chris went into business with an Indian partner; the high school daughter Wing Yan met Elem, an asylum seeker from Africa and becomes friends with him. Recalling the racial stereotypes formed while living in Guangzhou, the mother Erica feels anxious and unease over what is happening here...The film is funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
Programmer's note | How far can the warmth of a cup of tea bring people toward one another? The film does not leave racial boundaries as abstract ideas. Instead, it draws them into the deeply physical act of sharing tea. The warmth of a cup in one’s hand, the bodily feeling of remaining in the same room, and the time spent holding each other’s breath and silence bring anxieties and prejudices into a tangible form. Anxiety and distance that have long settled in the mind grow firmer when the presence of the other is held at the level of abstraction. But from the moment people see each other face to face, share a space, and pass a cup of tea, those feelings begin to take on a different texture. As people come to exist within the frame of togetherness, walls that once remained invisible begin to take on a palpable weight. With that very weight, they also begin to slowly give way. The change the film captures is not a mere realization that takes place in the mind. It shows that understanding is something learned through the body: by staying with one another, relearning the feel of a shared world. To accept one another may begin even before we imagine the same world. Perhaps, it may begin in becoming the kind of people who can breathe and remain in the same place together.





