Love Unto Waste

A tender and melancholic portrait of youth adrift that captures Tony Leung Chiu-wai at a formative moment in his career.

Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬’s haunting early work follows four young adults – a model, a singer, a poet and an unassuming office worker played with quiet, disarming sensitivity by Leung – whose lives intersect through chance encounters and sudden loss. As a mystery slowly unfolds, the film slips between romance, friendship and grief, observing how ordinary connections can be reshaped by tragedy.

Blending Hong Kong’s 1980s urban restlessness with Kwan’s delicate emotional register, Love Unto Waste stands as an early showcase of Leung's unmistakable screen presence: interior, emotionally attuned and deeply humane. It is also one of the defining films of Hong Kong’s New Wave, revealing the fragility and yearning of a generation moving through an uncertain era.

Selected by the Chinese Independent Film Foundation.