Downstream

What a taxi driver experienced in one of the nights under the atmosphere of political unrest in 2019, Hong Kong.

Five shorts reveal a fictional Hong Kong in 2025, depicting a dystopian city where residents and activists face crackdowns under iron-fisted rule.

Twenty years ago, Charlie came to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper. Not only did she leave her home country Philippine, she also left her husband and her six-year-old son.Close to her retirement, she looks forward to going back home and living with her son again. However, her dream does not come true as she wishes…

Ting and her friends go to Mui Wo where they see cows freely walking around. Someone appears and reminds them not to disturb the cows. The next day comes the news that seven cows were killed in a car accident at Mui Wo, which catches Ting and her friends’ attention. Ting starts a fundraising campaign hoping to build a cows’ shelter but is taken as an act to trick people’s money. The disheartened situation brings Ting to revisit the site, where she meets Sunset, the cow caretaker whom they have met before. She eventually develops a sense of responsibility to protect the cows when one day Sunset asks her to inherit the post of caretaker from him.

Just about dawn every day, the young shopkeeper meets her “friend”, the magazine delivery boy, the one she can only talk to all night long. Tonight is going to be their last night to meet. Nothing really happens, as usual.

Exceeding all his expectations, Ming is chosen to represent his school at running. He treasures this last opportunity in his secondary school life and does his very best to prepare for it. However, on the eve of the competition, he decides to give the opportunity to his best friend. There is more to competition than just the end result. Pride, dignity, dreams and friendship are put to the best.

She gets up early every morning. She works hard everyday. For her, a day is like a lifetime, but she lives on.

The custom of exchanging gifts at Christmas is no easy ritual for a little girl who resorts to collecting rubbish in order to raise enough money for the occasion. This film offers no earth-shaking scenes, nor heartstring-pulling sentimentality, but a glimpse of the world through the eyes of the little girl, so that we might feel what she feels about the society and humanity, and have empathy with rather than sympathy for her.