Jackson Ye and Zhou Dongyu on a motorbike in a still from 'Better Days' (2019) Courtesy of Magnum Pictures
Jackson Ye and Zhou Dongyu on a motorbike in a still from 'Better Days' (2019) Courtesy of Magnum Pictures
Better Days (2019) Magnum Pictures

ACMI, HKIFF and CreateHK present

Better Days

少年的你

Derek Tsang | Hong Kong, China | 2019 | M
Film

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Tickets

Full

$18

Concession

$14

Member

$12

When

Sun 5 Dec - Sat 11 Dec 2021

See below for additional related events

Anchored by deeply affecting central performances, Derek Tsang’s unflinching teen drama marks the first time a Hong Kong filmmaker has been nominated in the Academy Awards’ Best International Feature Film category.

Zhou Dongyu electrifies Derek Tsang's smash-hit hybrid of hard-hitting bullying drama and swoony, mismatched-couple love story.

Variety

Adapted from the novel Young and Beautiful by Jiu Yuexi, Tsang’s poignant, visceral drama follows the fraught paths to maturity of a conscientious high school student and a young street hustler. After witnessing a classmate’s suicide, straight-A student Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu) finds herself targeted by a vicious school bully and her Heathers-worthy enablers even as she is trying to prepare for the Gaokao, China’s notoriously difficult national university entrance exams.

Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee) has been living by his wits on the streets after being abandoned by his widowed mother years earlier, at thirteen. When the two meet after Bei is drawn into a particularly brutal street brawl, he becomes Chen’s unlikely protector despite their stark differences in class and life experience. An unflinching exposé of the scourge of on and off-campus bullying faced by students in mainland China, the film’s coda enumerates critical policy interventions that have been implemented in recent years to combat this insidious social issue.

Alongside its history-making nomination in the Best International Feature Film category at the 2021 Academy Awards, Better Days also made a clean sweep of eight major prizes at the 2020 Hong Kong Film Awards; among these Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best New Performer and Best Cinematography for Tsang’s Soulmate cinematographer, Jing-Pin Ju.

– Roberta Ciabarra; Curator, Film

Format: DCP
Language: Mandarin with English subtitles
Source: Magnum Films
Courtesy: Magnum Films
Runtime: 135 min

Event duration

135 mins

Rating

M

Mature themes and violence

Where

ACMI Cinemas, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

How to get there

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3-session pass
Full $45
Concession $39
Member $33

6-session pass
Full $84
Concession $72
Members $66

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About the director

Derek Tsang graduated from the University of Toronto and worked in film production after returning to Hong Kong. He began acting in films in 2001. The female leads in his directorial debut Soulmate (2016) – Better Days’ Zhou Dongyu among them – were both awarded the Best Actress prize at Taipei’s Golden Horse Film Festival. Winner of multiple Best Actress awards for Zhou Dongyu and Best New Performer accolades for actor-singer Jackson Yee, Tsang’s sophomore film, Better Days, achieved the distinction of being the first feature by a Hong Kong director to be nominated in the Best International Feature Film category at the 2021 Academy Awards.

Read an interview with Derek Tsang
Director Derek Tsang.jpg

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