Moderator: Alvin Wong, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Monday, September 7, 2026
Screening: 4:00-6:00 pm Hong Kong Time (In French and Mandarin with English subtitles)
Conversation (in English): 6:00-6:45 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=109002
All HKU staff and students are welcome. Registration requires HKU Portal ID.
Please note that this film is restricted to persons aged 18 or above.
Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother living in Montreal, has spent her life shaped by duty — to her family, her culture, and a loveless marriage. But when she meets Camille, a spirited young Québécoise, a long-buried desire is awakened. In the balmy and joyful Montreal summer, Feng Xia takes the radical step of choosing herself — embarking on a journey of forbidden love and long-overdue self-discovery. Her awakening becomes a profound reckoning with identity, exile, and the steep cost of liberation.
Xiaodan He (和晓丹) is a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker of Naxi heritage. She studied film production at the Beijing Film Academy from 1993 to 1997 and subsequently worked at the Yunnan Ethnic Film Studio. After immigrating to Montreal, Canada, in 2002 and studying screenwriting at the Université du Québec, she has dedicated herself to filmmaking. Her body of work encompasses both documentaries and feature films, with a creative focus on women-centric narratives. She was the first Chinese immigrant filmmaker to receive Canadian government funding for a feature film. Her first feature, A Touch of Spring (2018), was selected to represent Canada at the Cannes Film Festival and won He the Best Emerging Director Award at the Asian American International Film Festival in New York. Montréal, My Beautiful was awarded the WIFF Prize in Canadian Film at the 2025 Windsor International Film Festival, and Joan Chen (陳沖) won Outstanding Lead Performance in a Canadian Film at the 2026 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards for her performance in the film.
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