Ciao UFO, a nostalgic drama that waited over six years to reappear on the big screen after its film festival premiere, has been voted the best Hong Kong film of 2025 by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society (HKFCS), the organisation announced on January 19.
The win is a vindication for the film, directed by Patrick Leung Pak-kin (Born Wild), that premiered at the 2019 Hong Kong Asian Film Festival but faced a prolonged delay in release, reportedly due to an investor’s reluctance to greenlight a theatrical run.
Spanning around two decades of contemporary Hong Kong life, Ciao UFO stars Tsui Tien-you, Wong You-nam and Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin as former childhood friends from Hong Kong’s Wah Fu Estate bonded by a shared UFO sighting in 1985, who have grown up to find that adulthood is not quite what they had hoped for.
Since December 25, the film has screened in local cinemas more than a dozen times in a de facto limited release – after producer and co-screenwriter Amy Chin Siu-wai sought legal advice for it – although a full-scale cinema release remains uncertain.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.scmp.com ’
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