This year, the five best film nominees – In Broad Daylight, Time Still Turns the Pages, Mad Fate, The Goldfinger and A Guilty Conscience dominated the nominations in all major categories of the awards.
In Broad Daylight, a drama about a reporter exposing cases of abuse in a care home for the elderly and disabled, led with 16 nominations.
Nominated in 12 categories were Time Still Turns the Pages and The Goldfinger, while Mad Fate and A Guilty Conscience had 10 nominations each.
Leung, winner of the best actor award five times, is up against Dayo Wong in A Guilty Conscience, Bowie Lam in In Broad Daylight, Lo Chun-yip in Time Still Turns the Pages, and Da Peng in Dust to Dust.
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Sunday’s show kicked off with Yoyo Tse Wing-yan grabbing the best new performer award for her role in Fly Me to the Moon. She earlier took the same prize at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards and Hong Kong Film Directors’ Guild Awards.
The 22-year-old played the role of Lam Tsz-yuen, a young migrant from mainland China who must balance her quest for happiness with the reality of living with her drug-addict father at home.
Overjoyed with the prize, Tse said in a backstage interview that she liked to “thank the whole world”.
Asian Film Awards: Hong Kong’s Nick Cheuk takes prize for best new director
Asian Film Awards: Hong Kong’s Nick Cheuk takes prize for best new director
Best new director went to Nick Cheuk Yik-him for his drama about family trauma and student suicide, Time Still Turns the Pages, which was nominated for best film, best actor, best director, and best screenplay, among others.
Time Still Turns the Pages tells the story of a teacher looking back at his repressed childhood memories as he finds an anonymous suicide note in the classroom and strives hard to prevent another tragedy from happening as he himself faces a series of family problems.
Cheuk also won the best new director award at the 60th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan last year, and took the same prize earlier at the Asian Film Awards.
Rachel Leung Yung-ting landed the best supporting actress award for her role in In Broad Daylight. The 30-year-old plays an intellectually disabled girl at a residential care home who is later raped by the superintendent there.
Leung thanked the production crew and said: “I feel I am a very lucky girl and I met a lot of good mentors in the sector who have never stopped making me a better actress. It’s a dream come true for all actors.”
Best screenplay went to Yau Ni-hoi and Melvin Li for mystery thriller Mad Fate. It tells the story of a fortune-teller who crosses paths with a young man with a strong desire to commit murder and tries to change the latter’s destiny.
Tung Wai grabbed the best action choreography award for Bursting Point.
Best sound design went to Nopawat Likitwong for The Goldfinger. Lik Wong and Benson Poon won best visual effects for the film.
Also from the film project, Eric Lam won best art direction, Man Lim-chung took the best costume and make-up design, and Anthony Pun won best cinematography.
Controversial school documentary wins best picture at Hong Kong Film Awards
Controversial school documentary wins best picture at Hong Kong Film Awards
Taiwanese movie The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon won the award for best Asian Chinese-language film. The film is about a criminal who discovers he is only the third most wanted fugitive in Taiwan, and embarks on a journey to overtake the first two.
Allen Leung and David Richardson won best film editing for Mad Fate.
Meanwhile, veteran film costume manager Tong Ping received the “Professional Spirit Award”. Popularly known as “Big Sister Ping” by many in the trade, Tong joined film production teams behind the scenes at the age of 27 and has worked for more than 43 years in over 400 films.
Tong accepted her award to a standing ovation from the audience. She thanked her family and all those who had supported her work.
The local film industry enjoyed a rebound last year. With a return to post-pandemic normality and the full reopening of cinemas across the city, more films were able to be screened.
In 2023, 50 films were eligible to contend for the awards, marking a significant increase of about 50 per cent, compared with 33 the previous year.
