Hong Kong Film Festival UK returns with 17 UK premieres and Mary Stephen focus

The Hong Kong Film Festival UK returns to London this autumn with its biggest programme to date, bringing 40 titles, 17 UK premieres and 21 screenings and events to 11 venues across the capital from 25^th September to 4^th October. This year’s edition spans contemporary Hong Kong cinema, restored classics, experimental work and stories of migration and diaspora.

Opening night at the Barbican will host the UK theatrical premiere of Palimpsest: The Story of a Name, in which Hong Kong-born, Paris-based filmmaker and editor Mary Stephen investigates the mystery of an English surname within a Chinese family. Stephen is also this year’s Filmmaker in Focus, with the festival presenting the UK premiere of her first feature Shades of Silk, three early experimental shorts and screenings of Éric Rohmer’s The Aviator’s Wife and A Summer’s Tale, reflecting her more than two decades as his editor and co-composer. Stephen will attend Q&As during the retrospective.

Elsewhere, Ten Years director Kiwi Chow brings the UK premiere of Deadline, an Orwellian thriller centred on an anonymous note predicting the suicide of a student at a prestigious school. The Classics Revisited strand includes the UK premiere of a new 2K restoration of Angie Chen’s My Name Ain’t Suzie, alongside Patrick Tam’s My Heart Is That Eternal Rose, also newly restored and co-shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

The programme reaches beyond traditional screenings, with experimental moving-image work, discussions, a Barbican walking tour exploring Hong Kong’s walkway culture and a game workshop among the events. In partnership with Amnesty International UK, Narrating Migration examines experiences of exile and movement, while the festival’s free Online Panorama will run until 31^st October.

This fourth edition also marks the beginning of a more year-round approach for HKFFUK, with two further seasons planned from the end of 2026 into early 2027. Across its programme, the festival looks at Hong Kong cinema not only through the city itself but through the wider histories, communities and diasporas with which it continues to intersect.

The editorial unit

The fourth Hong Kong Film Festival UK takes place from 25^th September to 4^th October 2026 across London.