Golden Horse Awards 2024 nominations in full: All Shall Be Well leads Hong Kong contenders

Dead Talents Society leads nominations for Taipei-based awards with 11 nods; Sylvia Chang and 3 Hong Kong stars vie for best actress prize

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Chen Bo-lin (left) and Gingle Wang in a still from Dead Talents Society, which leads nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards with 11 nods. Three Hong Kong actresses are vying for the best actress prize in the Taipei-based awards. Photo: Handout

Published: 11:51am, 3 Oct 2024Updated: 12:08pm, 3 Oct 2024

Supernatural comedy Dead Talents Society, from Taiwanese director John Hsu Han-chiang of Detention fame, leads the race for honours in the 61st Golden Horse Awards with 11 nominations, including best picture, best director and best original screenplay.

Starring Gingle Wang Ching – arguably Taiwan’s hottest young actress of the past couple of years – as a newly deceased woman, the hilarious movie pictures a world in which spirits must prove themselves worthy of becoming ghosts through a rigorous selection process of auditions and contests.

Rounding out the nominations for best narrative feature are Stranger Eyes, the slow-burning surveillance-themed drama by Singaporean filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua; An Unfinished Film, Chinese director Lou Ye’s chaotic yet powerful film about Covid-19 lockdowns in Wuhan; Bel Ami, an LGBTQ drama from China’s Geng Jun; and Hong Kong’s All Shall Be Well.

The last of those, Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, is a heart-wrenching drama that highlights a loophole in same-sex couples’ legal rights in Hong Kong. Also nominated for best director, best leading actress and best film editing, it leads a notable contingent of Hong Kong films that will be vying for honours at the awards ceremony in Taiwan.

Patra Au (front), a best actress nominee at the Golden Horse Awards, in a still from All Shall Be Well. Photo: Films Boutique

The race for best leading actress will be of particular interest to Hong Kong audiences, as Patra Au Ga-man (All Shall Be Well), Chung Suet-ying (The Way We Talk) and Sandra Ng Kwan-yue (Love Lies) are all nominated. This marks the second year in a row that Chung is up for best actress, the last time being for The Lyricist Wannabe.

The other films by Hong Kong directors with Golden Horse Awards nominations are the feature Stuntman (for best action choreography), as well as several short films: the politically minded Colour Ideology Sampling.mov, Something About Us, and Letters from the Imprisoned: Chow Hang Tung, and the animated Father Figure.