MAIFF 2026  -

EMW

Let's have a cup of doodh patti Chai

June 6th

1:00 PM

Goethe Institute

Fiction

99

minutes

Content Warning:

About the Film

Director

Brian Hung

Country

Hong Kong

Year

2026

Program

EMW 2

Curated by

MAiFF Programming Team

Description

Synopsis | Kam Tin is home to people of many ethnicities, like a miniature United Nations. Chris moves there from the city with his wife Erica and their daughter, Wing Yan. As they adjust to their new life, they must also learn how to get along with neighbours of different ethnicities. Chris starts a business with an Indian partner, though Erica has little faith in it. Wing Yan befriends an African asylum seeker, sparking gossip. Haunted by unpleasant past experiences, Erica carries racial stereotypes, growing increasingly anxious and unsettled as tensions rise…

Programmer's note | How far can the warmth of a cup of tea bring people toward one another? The film does not leave racial boundaries as abstract ideas. Instead, it draws them into the deeply physical act of sharing tea. The warmth of a cup in one’s hand, the bodily feeling of remaining in the same room, and the time spent holding each other’s breath and silence bring anxieties and prejudices into a tangible form. Anxiety and distance that have long settled in the mind grow firmer when the presence of the other is held at the level of abstraction. But from the moment people see each other face to face, share a space, and pass a cup of tea, those feelings begin to take on a different texture. As people come to exist within the frame of togetherness, walls that once remained invisible begin to take on a palpable weight. With that very weight, they also begin to slowly give way. The change the film captures is not a mere realization that takes place in the mind. It shows that understanding is something learned through the body: by staying with one another, relearning the feel of a shared world. To accept one another may begin even before we imagine the same world. Perhaps, it may begin in becoming the kind of people who can breathe and remain in the same place together.

About the Director
Brian Hung
Director
Brian Hung graduated from the School of Film and TV, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He then pursued his master’s degree in art in media at New York University. His works are documentaries and short films. He had commissioned with RTHK and CNEX to create documentaries. “Let’s have a cup of Doodh Patti Chai is his first feature film funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
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