“Due to You Ka Kui,” a documentary on the late Past frontman Wong Ka Kui, will open the sixth Odyssey Movie Competition within the U.Okay., with NGO U.Okay.-China Movie Collab additionally choosing up the Hong Kong movie for native distribution.
Discussions started in March at FilMart in Hong Kong, which U.Okay.-China Movie Collab attended with the U.Okay. Movie Pavilion. The NGO deployed an analogous method final 12 months with Robin Lee’s Hong Kong documentary “4 Trails,” which opened Odyssey after which performed extra extensively in cinemas in 2025.
The movie, from Hong Kong director Rosa Pang, revisits Wong, the singer-songwriter who drove Past creatively and whose songs formed a technology of Cantonese-speaking listeners in Hong Kong and additional afield. The producers are Yip Sai Wing, one in all Past’s founding members, and Leslie Chan, the supervisor who’s credited with discovering the group.
The movie is constructed round interviews with individuals who knew Wong each personally and thru work. These sit alongside uncommon live performance recordings, never-before-shown archive materials from his early years and photographs that has not been launched till now. It follows Wong from his first brushes with music by way of the rise of Past and his development as a songwriter and performer, taking a look at his method to music, his character and his beliefs. Pang and Leslie Chan described it as a dedication to “a legend, an odd particular person, by way of recollections of those that really knew him. The movie seeks to rediscover the true Wong Ka Kui.”
Wong died in an accident in Japan in 1993, at age 31. The band’s songs have stored discovering new listeners since.
There’s additionally a U.Okay. hyperlink. The movie’s interview with Past founding member William Tang was shot in London.
After an earlier theatrical run in Asia, “Due to You Ka Kui” can have its U.Okay. premiere as Odyssey’s opening movie. The competition will run Sept. 28–Oct. 10 at numerous cinemas in addition to on-line. Every version is constructed round a special theme, and this 12 months’s is #Trend.
“Past didn’t merely observe the style of their technology, in some ways, they helped create it, like Oasis for the U.Okay.,” stated Hiu Man Chan, Odyssey’s creative director and founding father of U.Okay.-China Movie Collab. “Their music, picture, angle and elegance turned a part of the cultural reminiscence of Hong Kong and influenced generations throughout Asia. Trend just isn’t solely about what an period wears; it is usually about how a technology chooses to see and categorical itself. That makes ‘Due to You Ka Kui’ a really significant movie to launch this 12 months’s Odyssey.”
Hiu Man Chan stated the opening choose mirrored the competition’s goal to deal with vogue as greater than clothes and catwalks, and to discover how movie, music, visible id and popular culture feed into each other. Bringing the movie to the U.Okay. was “my true honor,” Hiu Man Chan added.
The choice additionally stretches the style theme to cowl youth tradition and music. Past’s sound and look, which combined worldwide rock influences with a Hong Kong that was altering quick by way of the Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties, turned sure up with a technology of younger followers. Yip has referred to as the documentary a uncommon likelihood to seek out the “odd particular person” behind the bandleader and icon.
Malaysian firm Irregular Studios launched “Due to You Ka Kui” internationally at FilMart in March, because the lead title of its new worldwide gross sales arm.
“‘Due to You Ka Kui’ just isn’t about nostalgia. The honesty of Wong Ka Kui as an individual – in what he thought, felt and believed – continues to resonate right now,” Pang stated.
Leslie Chan stated that after listening to all of the interviews, “I actually felt that I got here to know Ka Kui over again.”
Odyssey’s sixth version will program older movies alongside new ones. The competition’s opening and a few of its program have backing from the Hong Kong Financial and Commerce Workplace in London.
