Bringing emotion to screen

Last month, the movie won in three categories at the 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

Since its release in theaters across the Chinese mainland on April 12, the film has struck a chord, as evidenced by its high score of 8 out of 10 points on the popular review aggregator Douban.

Unfolding with a journalist who goes undercover as the overseas-returning granddaughter of a senior resident with dementia, the tale follows her investigative journey to expose a series of abuses, corruption, and sexual assault in a residential care home.

"As I was studying the subject, I realized that the core question I was eager to explore is, 'Does aging signify a loss of dignity and the inability to gracefully grow old?'" Kwan reveals to China Daily.

He recalls that he managed to obtain the contacts of two journalists who wrote one of the news articles about care home abuses, astonishingly discovering that what really happened was more "dramatic, absurd, and brutal" than the newspaper reported.

"I always thought the journalists had done a fantastic and heroic thing, as the care home had its license suspended because of their report. So, I asked them if they received gratitude from people," says Kwan.