Hong Kong Film Festival Uk 2025: Montages of a Modern Motherhood

Over the last decade, Hong Kong has seen a new wave of social realist filmmaking with director Oliver Chan as one of its most exciting proponents. With Montages of a Modern Motherhood (虎毒不), she follows up her landmark debut Still Human (2018) with an acutely observed drama about a young baker, Jing, and the challenges she faces as the mother of a newborn, stuck between a pushy mother-in-law and an unhelpful husband.

Akin to the work of a socially-conscious filmmaker like Ken Loach, a realist depiction of motherhood is used to explore the subtle, everyday forms of oppression that maintain women’s position within patriarchal Asian societies. This critique develops through an increasingly stifling soundtrack, made with accomplished sound designer Tu Duu-chih (Yi Yi, In the Mood for Love, Millennium Mambo), that threatens to push the film toward psychological horror.

Premiering at Busan and officially selected at Tokyo and Hong Kong International Film Festival, it won the Golden Horse NETPAC Award and Best Actress at Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards. Indeed, it is a masterful character study carried by Hedwig Tam’s central performance – one that sympathetically explores the social expectations that can overwhelm new mothers in the seemingly unavoidable collision between traditional values and modern sensibilities.

Brought to you in conjuction with Hong Kong Film Festival UK 2025