By Variety | Created at 2025-03-18 00:53:56 | Updated at 2025-03-18 05:49:10
6 hours ago
Hong Kong is better known for its hard-boiled cop pics and manly kung-fu classics than for movies tackling women’s roles in society and the wider issues around childbirth.
But Hong Kong director Oliver Chan, who took her English name from the eponymous waif in Charles Dickens’ novel “Oliver Twist,” is one of the hottest properties in the Hong Kong industry. And there’s not a roundhouse kick or a high-octane pistol face-off in sight. She is a passionate advocate for hot-button social issues such as motherhood and the plight of domestic workers.
Chan was named best new director at the Asian Film Awards in 2019 for her feature directorial debut, “Still Human,” which chronicles the relationship between a man using a wheelchair and his Filipina domestic helper. In “The Montages of a Modern Motherhood,” she brings the lives of young mothers out of the shadows onto Hong Kong cinema screens.
“Our audience, and the international audience, were used to Hong Kong themes being really commercial, so making something different was a challenge. It was quite difficult to overcome this, to get funding, to get investment on these stories, because they’re not so mainstream,” Chan said.
The movie tells the story of Suk-jing, a new mother who struggles with the lack of understanding from her husband and her in-laws, and also details how she tries to juggle family and work and her own mental health issues. It goes deep into sensitive themes about mothers harming themselves or their babies.
These are relatively familiar themes in Hollywood movies, but are less common in Asia. And they are themes that chime with broader social questions. Fertility is a major issue in the region. Hong Kong’s fertility rate was 1.24 children per woman — the world’s fifth lowest. Only Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan (and war-torn Ukraine) were lower. Relatively weak maternal support and expensive child care have dragged on the Asian financial hub’s fertility rate. These are themes that resonate around the world.
Around one-third of new mothers in Hong Kong suffer from postpartum depression, which is significantly higher than the global average of 18%, according to research by the University of Hong Kong.
Mainland China’s population is also falling fast — women have not started having more kids despite the abandonment of the One Child Policy restricting the number of births. This has major economic consequences in China as it is worried its population will get old before it can replace those pensioners with new workers.
Chan’s movie featured in the Women’s Empowerment section at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
“We see mothers as characters in almost every project, layers of stereotype about mothers with similar personalities and similar storylines … I want to make a film that puts mothers as the main character and see her, not just as a mother, but also as a person with a complex personality, with critical dreams and emotions,” said Chan.
The Hong Kong biz has suffered since the pandemic and its overall box office is shrinking. While blockbusters are earning record highs, smaller scale films are suffering.
“The gap between these two extremes us really big now, and it also means that most films cannot get a return,” says Chan.
Chan is also a woman working in a business that has been very heavily skewed towards men. So is it getting easier for female directors?
“Female directors are expected to make certain films, romance, love stories — really small-scale, warm, positive, dedicated stories,” she said.
“Maybe our audience is just really used to stories about men, so they are used to a male perspective on stories. Hong Kong is catching up with the international trend — if we just keep making good films, we’ll eventually have more presence in Hong Kong,” said Chan.
