Hong Kong International Film Festival 2026 highlights: 12 must-see movies and programmes

The Hong Kong International Film Festival returns in April, celebrating its 50th edition with a mouth-watering retrospective of classics from the last half-century of Chinese-language cinema. New and old works alike from masters of the art form, including Zhang Yimou, Tsai Ming-liang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, will play alongside a typically eclectic selection of some of the finest recent offerings from around the world. Acclaimed Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s latest work, We Are All Strangers, is this year’s opening selection, while China’s “sixth generation” film auteur Jia Zhangke is the subject of a 12-film retrospective. Juliette Binoche is also given a special spotlight. In addition to these undeniable highlights, below are 12 selections not to be missed from this year’s programme. 1. Silent Friend Hong Kong film icon Tony Leung Chiu-wai continues to venture beyond the Asian film industry in increasingly unpredictable directions with this thoughtful, low-key meditation from Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi (On Body and Soul). Assuming the lead in one of a triptych of stories revolving around a centuries-old ginkgo tree within the grounds of a German university, Leung plays a neuroscientist who travels to the medieval town during the pandemic to conduct an experiment on the towering specimen. 2. Nouvelle Vague Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 debut, Breathless, might not have been the first film in the French New Wave, but it instantly became the flagship for one of world cinema’s most influential movements. Shot mostly in French and in startling monochrome, Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s fastidious recreation of that film’s production, is every bit as hip, freewheeling and innovative as its subject matter. Zoey Deutch gives a scene-stealing performance as Jean Seberg opposite relative newcomer Guillaume Marbeck, quite excellent as the medium’s greatest maverick. 3. Sirat Nominated for two Academy Awards, Oliver Laxe’s latest offering emerges from the sandstorms of the Moroccan deserts as a pulse-pounding allegorical thriller that must be seen on the big screen. Spanish veteran Sergi Lopez plays a desperate father who, with a young son in tow, navigates the anarchic underground world of illegal rave culture in a frantic search for his missing daughter. As his journey devolves into a nerve-jangling road trip across the mountains, Sirat emerges as The Wages of Fear for the dance music generation. 4. A Poet Oscar is middle-aged, alone and prone to drowning his sorrows over his failed ambitions of becoming a celebrated poet. He is, as writer-director Simon Mesa Soto admits, “the very worst version of myself”. Filled with self-loathing for succumbing to the cliché of becoming the angry, tortured artist, Oscar finally finds a glimmer of hope when invited to teach a class of inner-city high school kids. Most surprising of all, A Poet emerges as a humorous and warm-hearted celebration of artistic pursuit. 5. Good Boy Released in some territories as Heel, Jan Komasa’s English-language debut proves a very British affair. Uniting two of the year’s most celebrated television talents, the film stars Anson Boon (Mobland) as a volatile hoodlum who awakens after a titanic bender to find himself shackled in the basement of Adolescence star Stephen Graham’s remote country home. What follows is not merely an unconventional lesson in social etiquette, but a scathing attack on authoritarian control that is by turns shocking, toe-curling and darkly hilarious. 6. Pillion A romantic comedy like no other, Pillion tests the limits of true love’s pursuit, anchored by a pair of daring performances that come along all too infrequently. Harry Melling displays heartbreaking vulnerability as mild-mannered Colin, who falls into a submissive affair with an impossibly handsome and mysterious biker, Ray, played with impenetrable allure by Alexander Skarsgard. Colin yearns for domestic bliss and a meaningful connection, but Ray’s world is turbocharged, erotically adventurous and potentially very dangerous. 7. Megadoc Thirty years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s daring science fiction opus Megalopolis was finally unveiled in 2024 to a mostly baffled and decidedly muted reception. Leaving Las Vegas filmmaker Mike Figgis attempts to crack the code of this bold and wildly misguided project in a new documentary that takes us behind the scenes of the star-studded, effects-heavy endeavour to observe an ageing auteur as he wrestles to realise a vision that the rest of the world failed to fully comprehend. 8. Mag Mag An audacious meta-textual masterpiece from a bold new voice in Japanese genre cinema, Yuriyan Retriever’s deconstruction of J-horror tropes is as shocking as it is hilarious. The jumping-off point is the curse of “Mag Mag” – the ghost of an overweight high-school girl who took her own life and now terrorises playground hotties. When the spirit’s latest quarry is also the romantic target of the equally unhinged but very much alive Sanae (Sara Minami), the stage is set for a showdown like no other. 9. Battleship Potemkin Few classics from the silent era of Soviet cinema wield as much technical invention and narrative bravura as Sergei Eisenstein’s enduring masterpiece from 1925. Essentially the story of a mutiny aboard the eponymous military vessel, the film explodes into life through rapid-fire editing, form-bending montage and a climactic showdown that has become one of the most influential sequences of all time. Beautifully restored and accompanied by a dazzling new score by British electropop icons Pet Shop Boys, this is peak cinema. 10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show Celebrating its 50th anniversary with a sparkling new 4K restoration, the greatest cult movie of all time returns, replete in fishnet stockings and stiletto heels and clamouring to dance the “Time Warp” again. Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick play the white-bread newlyweds who stumble upon the spooky castle of extraterrestrial transvestite mad scientist Dr Frank-N-Furter (a never-better Tim Curry), where they are transported into a world of all-singing, all-dancing gender-fluid debauchery that demands its audience leap into the aisles. 11. Joe Hsieh animation collection The extraordinary animations of Taiwanese artist and filmmaker Joe Hsieh Wen-ming are celebrated in this programme showcasing five of his horrifying visions of a world that exists just beneath the surface of our own. Cannibals, thieves and mutant insect sirens coexist in a nightmarish hellscape brought vividly to life by Hsieh’s intoxicating imagination and boldly critical take on contemporary life. Ranging from the defiantly avant-garde to creepy tales grounded all too obviously in our recognisable reality, his is a world that, once seen, will not easily be forgotten. 12. Cyclone (closing film) Philip Yung Tsz-kwong makes a welcome return to his indie roots with this socially potent tale of a young transgender woman from mainland China navigating Hong Kong’s societal pitfalls. Liu Yuqiao gives an extraordinary performance as the protagonist, who is saving up for gender-affirming surgery through sex work. Along the way, she must contend with a barrage of injustices and indecencies from a society that remains stubbornly ill-equipped to embrace or even acknowledge her. The Hong Kong International Film Festival runs from April 1 to 12 at various venues. For full programme details, visit hkiff.org.hk. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

Hong Kong International Film Festival 2026 highlights: 12 must-see movies and programmes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Silent Friend, Sirat, Good Boy and Pillion are among our top picks at this year’s festival, which is celebrating its 50th edition

1. Silent Friend

Silent Friend, Sirat, Good Boy and Pillion are among our top picks at this year’s festival, which is celebrating its 50th edition