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Hui, 73, will be awarded a Golden Lion award
for lifetime achievement by the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday.
Alberto Barbera, the festival's director, called her "one of
Asia's most respected, prolific, and versatile directors."
Her new film is a tale of tortuous love and moral depravity
within Hong Kong's high society before World War Two. Based on a
short story by Eileen Chang, it centres on a young Shanghai
schoolgirl who seeks help from a wealthy aunt.
Moving in with the temperamental and disillusioned former
concubine, she gets sucked into her world of fancy parties, and
ambiguous relations with rich, older men. She then falls in love
with a troubled playboy.
"When we first finished shooting, the protest movement in Hong
Kong started ... every day we were hearing the tear gas from
downstairs and we could even smell it and I had to return home
every night through the subway," Hui said.
After five months of working through the protests, the pandemic
then complicated post-production work, leaving the team relying
on zoom meetings.
"We've hardly met and we've done it and it was, how to call it?
Fantastic struggle."
"It's a kind of a moving example of how film people work
regardless of crossfires and everything, and we've tried our
best to make the film despite great difficulties."
Hui has directed almost 30 feature films including "Boat
People", "Ordinary Heroes" and "The Golden Era."
Barbera said Hui recounts with sensitivity "individual stories
that interweave with important social themes such as those of
refugees, the marginalized, and the elderly."
Hui said she wanted to leave it for her work to convey her
political views.
"I think it's better for me not to comment too much on the
situation itself because this film is invested by Chinese
companies and they have allowed us to shoot this movie with
immense moral complexity and it has passed censorship with very
minor cuts," Hui said.
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; Writing by Alexandra Hudson;
Editing by Paul Simao)
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