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Renowned Hong Kong director and producer Soi Cheang is repping his country for the first time in the International Feature Oscar category, with this year’s box office hit Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. The film has made over $111 million globally since it first premiered locally in early May, and then went on to screen as part of the Midnights section in Cannes.

During Deadline’s Contenders Film: International awards-season showcase, Cheang talked about approaching the project, which is based on Andy Seto’s Chinese comic City of Darkness, and re-creating the titular enclave of British Colonial Hong Kong which was ultimately demolished in 1993.

The film is set in the 1980s and follows troubled youth Chan Lok-kwun (Raymond Lam) as he accidentally enters the Walled City, discovers the order amidst its chaos, and learns important life lessons along the way. In the Walled City, he becomes close friends with Shin,...

Hong Kong has selected box office hit Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In as its best international feature film entry for the 2025 Oscars.

The film’s selection was announced by the Federation of Motion Picture Producers of Hong Kong.

Directed by Soi Cheang, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In has grossed close to $100 million at the global box office. The film played out-of-competition as a midnight screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Based on Andy Seto’s Chinese comic City of Darkness, the film is set in the 1980s and follows Chan Lok-kwun (played by Raymond Lam), an illegal migrant attempting to pay his way to a fake ID. After having to flee triad boss Mr. Big (played by Sammo Hung), Chan takes refuge in Kowloon City.

The film also stars Louis Koo, Ritchie Jen, Terrance Lau, Kenny Wong and Philip Ng.

Cheang has also directed action films Limbo,...

Action thriller Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In has been selected as Hong Kong’s entry to the 97th Academy Awards.

The Federation of Motion Picture Producers of Hong Kong voted for the film, directed by Soi Cheang, to represent the region in the best international feature film category of the Oscars.

The feature played as a midnight screening at Cannes following its release in Hong Kong on May 1, where it proved a major hit with takings of $13.7m. Recording nearly 1.6 million admissions made it the highest ever ticket sales for a local film in Hong Kong and the second...

Trinity CineAsia has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In, the Hong Kong period action drama that will screen at Cannes next month, in a deal with Media Asia.

Directed by Soi Cheang, the highly anticipated feature is set to be released in Hong Kong and China on May 1 before it plays in the Midnight Screenings section of Cannes. An opening date in the UK and Ireland has yet to be announced but Trinity CineAsia said it is “scheduled for release across cinemas nationwide soon after” the festival, which runs May 14-25.

Distribution deals were...

Despite having directed some excellent films, as in the case of “Dog Bite Dog” and “Love Battlefield” and a masterpiece in “Limbo”, Soi Cheang's filmography is actually filled with titles of questionable quality, to say the least. “Shamo” which is based on the homonymous manga written by Izo Hashimoto and illustrated by Akio Tanaka definitely lies in the second category.

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In an expectedly failed effort to fit 34 volumes of a manga into a 105 minutes movie, the script revolves around Ryo Narushima, a young man who ended up in prison for killing his parents. While inside, he is being tortured and abused, with the permission of the notorious warden, Principal Saeki, who seems at least as sinister as the convicts. Just before he commits suicide, though, Ryo is saved by Kenji, a karate master who is in prison for killing the Japanese Prime minister,...

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer nudged near the $60 million mark in China during a somewhat downbeat weekend for moviegoing in the world’s second-largest theatrical territory.

The Universal Pictures-backed historical blockbuster added $2.5 million from Friday to Sunday, taking its total to $58.1 million, according to data from box office tracker Artisan Gateway. Oppenheimer came in fourth place for the frame behind local crime thriller Dust to Dust, Millennium Pictures’ action franchise misfire Expend4bles and Chinese comedy blockbuster No More Bets.

Oppenheimer has been huge on Imax in China. The film earned $740,000 this past weekend for a $17 million total in the format, which is a whopping 30 percent of its nationwide cume to date.

Oppenheimer opened in China nearly a month ago and its staying power has been considerable. Nolan has a strong following in China — a fact that Universal leveraged with a very well-received prerelease promotional visit to Beijing by the director in late August.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer climbed to $47.2 million in China over the weekend, continuing a better-than-expected run in the world’s second-biggest box office territory. But the blockbuster biopic ceded first place to Chinese crime thriller Dust to Dust, which came on strong with a $22.2 million two-day opening starting Saturday, topping Oppenheimer‘s $9.6 million Friday-to-Sunday total, according to data from box office tracker Artisan Gateway.

Chinese ticketing app Maoyan forecasts Oppenheimer will finish its local run with approximately $57 million, which will make it the fourth-biggest U.S. film release in China in 2023 behind Fast X ($139.5 million), Meg 2: The Trench ($116.5 million, but a China co-production) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($86.9 million).

Despite its long runtime and weighty historical subject matter — which many analysts expected would be a drag in China — Oppenheimer has been boosted by a rave local reception. On the influential fan platform Douban, it has received nearly...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including David Easteal’s The Plains (one of the best films we saw on the festival circuit last year), Christophe Honoré’s Winter Boy, Koji Fukada’s 10-part series The Real Thing, Bruce Labruce’s Saint-Narcisse, and more.

Additional highlights include three films by Joan Micklin Silver, additions to their Lars von Trier series, Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville, Sally Potter’s Orlando, Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, and more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

April 1 – Henry Fool, directed by Hal Hartley

April 2 – Waltz with Bashir, directed by Ari Folman

April 3 – The All-Round Reduced Personality – Redupers, directed by Helke Sander | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema

April 4 – Saint-Narcisse, directed by Bruce Labruce

April 5 – Jaime Francisco, directed by Javier Rodríguez | Brief Encounters

April 6 – Hester Street, directed by Joan Micklin...

We’ve missed the primal scream that is Soi Cheang’s cinema. The Hong Kong director’s frenzied genre tales of survival—horror films, cop movies, thrillers, action movies—have been waylaid by his big budget success in the CGI-driven Monkey King franchise (three entries and counting), movies of varying quality but certainly scrubbed of the extraordinary desperation and exalting feats of tactile physical endurance that characterize such films as Dog Bite Dog (2006), Motorway (2012), and SPL2: A Time for Consequences (2015). With Limbo, the story of a wild, grieving cop (Lam Ka Tung), his young superior (Mason Lee), and an ex-convict, former substance abuser (an extraordinary Liu Cya) who become embroiled in the search for a serial killer in Hong Kong, Cheang is back and more fierce than ever.More than that, the director visually reinvents the island city: In harsh, high-contrast black and white images Hong Kong is a garbage-strewn dystopia,...