Hong Kong director Ray Yeung is changing LGBTQ rep in Asian film

It’s not that LGBTQ issues have been absent from Hong Kong cinema. It’s just that they’ve mostly been scripted in as comedic relief. Back in the 1990s, gays and lesbians were often portrayed stereotypically, even mocked, in local romcoms. Observing this first in Hong Kong, then London, was a young Ray Yeung Yaw-kae.

After cutting his teeth on several short films, Yeung wrote and directed his debut feature in Britain in 2006. In Cut Sleeve Boys, one of the two British-Chinese gay protagonists goes through an introspective process that leads him into cross-dressing as part of his journey of self-knowledge.

If that plot point was a reaction to the portrayals of non-straight characters in the Hong Kong films of his childhood, Yeung’s second feature, set in New York, 2015’s Front Cover, follows a fashion-world protagonist who, while comfortable being publicly gay, chooses to “closet” his Asianness.

But it was 2019’s Suk Suk (also known as Twilight’s Kiss), Yeung’s first Hong Kong-made film, that gave the filmmaker international status – perhaps two older, married, long-closeted gay leads were more … acceptable? – and secured his place at the vanguard of the genre.

Yeung’s latest, All Shall Be Well (2024), examines how things fall apart for a lesbian in her 60s when her long-time lover suddenly dies. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival last February, and is still touring foreign film festivals.

Between all the press, promotion and travel, Yeung recently returned home to Hong Kong, where he is executive director of the annual Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.