“Oh my god, I hate that,” writer and director Timothy Yeung Wing-kwong mutters under his breath at the mention of “content” as a way to refer to a film.
It’s about two weeks after a press junket packed with screenings, audience Q&As and interviews in Hong Kong in mid-December, and he’s dialing in online after Christmas back home in Toronto. On this day he’s joined by his producer Ridley Tsui Po-wah, a Hong Kong veteran actor, director, stunt performer and choreographer who counts Ringo Lam’s Full Contact and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation among his nearly 100 credits. Tsui and Yeung happened upon each other after Tsui moved from Hong Kong to Toronto five years ago, fully intent on continuing his work in cinema; Yeung was working on the script for Finch & Midland during the pandemic lockdown. Yeung was workshopping the script with what would turn into his crew (including cinematographer Jeff Wong) when it crossed Tsui’s desk.
“I found it very human,” says Tsui of a story that’s ringing a timely bell worldwide. “I’m one of them, right? An immigrant. Moving to a new country involves a lot of things, a lot of changes and a lot of sacrifice — no matter where you come from. So, I want to create a film that was deeply impactful; something to help people see the world from a different perspective. I think it is ultimately a story of human resilience, and it deserves to be seen.”
An up-and-coming filmmaker
Rewind to Hong Kong in late 2025, when Yeung was busy on the promotion circuit in support of his debut feature Finch & Midland (whose Chinese title, 今天應該很高興, means “today should be happy”). He waltzes up to Kennedy Town’s Golden Scene cinema looking every bit the storyteller he essentially is, armed with an old school 35mm Nikon film camera; you never know when a random image will lead to cinema.
Yeung was born in Toronto to Hong Kong parents and spent a great deal of time travelling back and forth between the two cities, until mostly settling down in Canada after the rest of his family relocated in the 1990s — including a hilariously foul-mouthed grandmother who provided the basis for Nina Paw Hei-ching’s geriatric character in Finch & Midland. After studies in Toronto and New York, he cut his teeth in Hong Kong on productions like Andrew Lau’s The Guillotines and making independent short films, including 90 Days (2013), which found its way to the Sundance Channel.
Yeung is one of the most forward looking filmmakers you’re likely to meet. He has a laundry list of directors he admires, including Wong Kar-wai, Ang Lee, Lee Chang-dong and Patrick Tam Kar-ming in Hong Kong, and Derek Cianfrance, Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay and Paul Thomas Anderson overseas. But it’s emerging filmmakers he’s most affected by. “I enjoy the work of younger filmmakers like Jun Li, Sasha Chuk and Wong Chun,” he says. “Despite everything they’re getting out there and doing it.”
Displaced Hongkongers
Finch & Midland is named for the intersection in the suburban area of Scarborough that is one of several hubs for Toronto’s large Chinese population, which numbers around 700,000. Yeung focuses the story on four Hongkongers living in the area after moving in the 1990s, but he wanted to stay far away from common tropes in immigrant stories — the fish out of water, the comedic culture clashes — using Mabel Cheung’s 1987 drama An Autumn’s Tale as something of a north star.
Yeung’s characters aren’t newcomers; there’s no amazement at their surroundings and they have lives, however unfulfilled they may be. The main players include widower Tony (Anthony Wong Chau-sang, who earned a Golden Horse Award nomination for supporting actor), factory manager confronted with the limits of economic mobility who befriends a rootless neighbourhood teen (newcomer Jaden Kwan), identified mostly as Young Man; single mother Fan (Theresa Lee Yee-hung, in her first film since 2014), working towards a real estate license; washed up pop star Dan (Patrick Tam Yiu-man, Fight for Tomorrow) trying to forge a relationship with his estranged daughter; and stable professional Eva (journeywoman actor Harriet Yeung Sze-man, arguably the film’s standout and an audience favourite), who’s also caring for her mother (Paw, In Broad Daylight).
The film was shot in just 20 days, using an intimate and entirely deliberate 4:3 aspect ratio. The compact framing of the images visualises the contrast between constricted Hong Kong and vast Canada, signals the limit of how much of the world the characters can see — the identifying CN Tower only appears faintly in the distance — and how alone each feels, and establishes a link to the 1990s no one can quite shake. Only Wong’s Tony seems to be making an effort to live in the world he exists in, even if he fails.
Yeung based his characters on real people, and Tam ran with that baton. As the bottom-scraping former star, Tam, who broke into the industry after winning a singing competition, had fun with the meta casting, and actually suggested one of his own 1997 deep cuts (“歡天喜地留給你” or “Leave Joyful Things For You”) to use as a running motif. “He told us that if I hadn’t switched to acting this really could be [his] life. And he’d never played a singer before, so it was kind of cathartic,” says Yeung.
The characters and their stories evolved after years of simply listening to people around him and in his community. Yeung recalls loitering in the kitchen with his parents’ restaurant staff on break and after hours when everyone was eating, smoking and chatting, and telling him how they would pack airline lunches at the airport until 11am, then rush to the restaurant to wash dishes late into the night. “That always stuck with me. So I just combined all these aspects of my life,” he says.
Finch & Midland is unapologetically specific in its worldview — these are displaced Hongkongers — but intensely universal in its fundamental themes. Tony comes face to face with economic stress and the dawning realisation that no matter how much hockey he watches, he’s unlikely to be one of the gang. Eva is a dutiful and unappreciated daughter, lonely and afraid that in middle age she’ll be alone forever. Dan learns the hard way the past will never be repeated, and Fan discovers a lack of support among her tribe. Being Chinese, or from Toronto, or from Hong Kong is irrelevant. “Even though we’re different, and we see the things that make us different, it’s through these universal themes that we realise we’re actually more alike. And is that not the point of cinema? To watch together, to cry, laugh and breathe together. It’s why we go.”
Later, online, Tsui sums it up best. “You don’t have to be an immigrant to understand what it’s like to feel like an outsider.”
The Hong Kong–Canada connection
On an unrelated note, Finch & Midland is notable for its status as the second film in as many years to be a Hong Kong–Canada collaboration, following Trevor Choi, Kurt Yuen and Cyrus Lo’s Fresh Off Markham. Two films may not be a trend yet, but the cooperation between two film industries under constant funding, censor and exhibition pressures doesn’t go unnoticed.
Hong Kong and Canada may be unlikely allies, but not illogical ones considering the long history between the two. Yeung points to what he sees as a rising exchange of stories between Hong Kong and other places that transcend the conventional immigrant story. He remembers finally meeting Tsui and floating an idea for a simple, low-key drama that didn’t make outsized demands of its producer. In addition to working in Hong Kong, Tsui had established independent production houses in Shanghai (Ridley Shanghai Production), and then Toronto (Righteous Alliance Entertainment), and he told Yeung to think bigger. He flipped though his proverbial Rolodex to put together a cast that truly bridged East and West, and not in a way that just benefits Asian-Americans.
“I would love to find another way forward for Hong Kong cinema, and maybe one of the ways to help the industry or to create new voices is to maybe shoot some films abroad,” says Tsui, admitting he already has another project in mind for production in Canada. Yeung agrees. “Everyone around the world is trying to find that new way of making films, and maybe it is collaborations with other countries and other outlets,” he says, citing Janus Victoria’s Filipino-Japanese co-production Diamonds in the Sand. “The key is doing it without sacrificing the voice of the story.”
According to Yeung, Finch & Midland has indeed retained its voice, one he jokes is depressing his audiences. In the run-up to Christmas, he joked with a friend that the film was “not Love Actually but Sad Actually.” Despite the stagnation and isolation the film’s characters feel, however, the story isn’t without hope. “Bonds are created if we take that little step to change,” he says. “There is a bond between Tony and the young man, and when Eva takes off her make-up she looks at herself and smiles. There is something there. Dan’s a little bit more ambiguous, but I think that’s just the reality of life.”
Finch & Midland is currently in cinemas.