Twilight’s Kiss
Director: Ray Yeung Run Time: 92 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Ben Yuen, Patra Au, Tai-Bo
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese with English subtitles
Presented in the Virtual Screening Room in partnership with Strand Releasing.
“Weaves a portrait that is refreshingly honest in its small tragedies and razor-sharp in its criticism of ongoing discrimination, be it based on age or sexuality.”
– Elizabeth Kerr, Hollywood Reporter
About the film:
Official Selection of Berlinale and Busan International Film Festival, and winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2020 Asian American International Film Festival. Inspired by the book The Oral History of Gay Men in Hong Kong by Dr. Travis Kwong.
Twilight’s Kiss presents the story of two closeted married men in their twilight years. One day Pak, 70, a taxi driver who refuses to retire, meets Hoi, 65, a retired single father, in a park. Despite years of societal and personal pressure, they are proud of the families they have created through hard work and determination. Yet in that brief initial encounter, something is unleashed in them which had been suppressed for so many years. As both men recount and recall their personal histories, they also contemplate a possible future together.
About the filmmaker:
Twilight’s Kiss is executive producer, director, and writer Ray Yeung’s third feature film and his first Chinese-language feature film. Born in Hong Kong, he graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City. He has helmed commercials, crafted short films, and directed two theatre plays that were staged in London and Hong Kong.
His award-winning films include his directorial debut Cut Sleeve Boys (2006), a comedy following two gay Asian best friends on their journeys of love and self-discovery in London, and the critically acclaimed Front Cover (2015) about the relationship between a gay New York fashion stylist and a rising Beijing actor.
Yeung has served as Chairman of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival since 2000, and he noticed that few films have provided a glimpse into Hong Kong’s LGBTQ+ community. Yeung speaks in depth about his inspiration for Twilight’s Kiss (originally titled Suk Suk) in an interview for the South China Morning Post.
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