Synopsis
In the triad neighbourhoods of Kowloon, Little Cheung (Yiu Yuet-ming) helps out at his father’s restaurant. When he encounters a little immigrant girl, Fan (Mak Wai-fan), they spend the summer delivering food to triad members, and embarking on an ill-advised quest to find Little Cheung’s estranged brother. As the shadow of Hong Kong’s handover looms overhead, it is a summer of innocence lost. Little Cheung is a trenchant social-realist drama that ponders upon Hong Kong’s political complexities through the eyes of its charismatic nine-year-old lead. Crisscrossing stories of immigrants, gangsters and native Hong Kongers, the film plays out with a considerable depth and vivacity. The stark reality of the city’s social dichotomies come to the fore with Chan’s neo-realist sensibilities as he constructs a world of grimy survivalism.