It should be noted that neither director Patrick Leung Pak-kin nor screenwriter Kong Ho-yan grew up in Wah Fu, Aberdeen’s most storied housing estate, or claims to ever have had a close encounter with a UFO of any kind. Regardless, the two are responsible for the year’s most resilient film event, Ciao UFO (再見UFO), a Wah Fu-set feature that first appeared on the festival circuit in 2019 and is finally getting a long-overdue general release.
When producer Amy Chin Siu-wai told Leung a release date had been secured late in 2025, his response was a raised eyebrow and an, “Are you sure?” This isn’t the first time Leung’s had a completed film shelved. “I made a film in China in 2014 for the Asian Games, and it was shelved for four years,” he notes. “It was about dragon boating and after the premiere in the games, it was supposed to be released the same year, but it was shelved. I got no explanation.”
Leung heard rumours about the cancellation being a financial decision of some sort, the same excuse Warner Bros. in the United States made waves for in 2022 and 2023 when it put several completed films on ice in favour of tax write-offs. Rumours flew about the content — but in Ciao UFO’s case, “I think it’s because the financier wasn’t very experienced in movies,” says Leung. “He was hoping someone would buy it. Finally, the contract naturally expired and we could do what we liked.”
The six years it spent on the shelf have made Ciao UFO a minor phenomenon. Since its release in mid-March, Ciao UFO hasn’t conquered the box office quite the way both the Chinese New Year giants have; Back to the Past (ironically also shelved for two years) and Night King have earned a combined HK$200 million. That said, it was named 2025’s best film by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, and earned 10 Hong Kong Film Awards nominations, taking home prizes for best original song (by Tsui Chin-hung and Leung Pak-kin), supporting actress (Michelle Wai Sze-nga), screenplay and director.
Strong word of mouth stopped Ciao UFO from fading away. Like the two New Year films, it trades in a type of nostalgia that resonates deeply with Hongkongers. Leung is still surprised by the response to the film, which jumps back and forth through time, between 1985 and 2005; between a hopeful and forward-looking Hong Kong and the one battered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, SARS, a fixation on wealth and an uncertain future. It’s the patterns of the story’s “future” and of a society in freefall that’s connecting with audiences.
“I’ve gone to audience Q&A events about 40 times now, and that’s new to me,” says Leung. “It’s very exciting and very rewarding, and it reminds me of why I make movies. It’s for the audience, not for box office. But it’s a real surprise to see. Almost every screening will have people in tears. We didn’t intend to make anyone cry. And it’s not about the ending, it’s neither tragedy nor happy. It’s normal life.”
He pauses for a moment. “I think I’m old enough to say that everything happens in cycles,” he continues. “Pandemics, financial crises, political crises, everything comes in cycles. Many people have said the release delay was actually a good thing.”
Ka Him and the grandfather he adores – Still, Ciao UFO, courtesy Golden Scenes 
Patrick Leung Pak-kin, Ciao UFO’s film director – Photo by May James for Zolima CityMag
Wah Fu Estate kids having a close encounter in Ciao UFO – Photo courtesy Golden Scene 
Patrick Leung Pak-kin and writer Kong Ho-yan – Photo by May James for Zolima CityMag
Not quite out of this world
Leung could be right. Ciao UFO chronicles four friends growing up in Wah Fu Estate. Chan Tsz-kin (Matthew Wong Cheuk-yin) is a curious kid with an interest in astronomy and an often absent sailor father. Lam Hoi-yee (Lam Seung-yu) is an artsy brainiac who keeps her friends in order. Ho Ka-him (Chui Ka-him) is agreeably sweet-natured and is also battling leukaemia, and Little Brother (Shawn Heung Sung-yu) is the silent tag-along.
On the night one of the characters is suffering a family tragedy, they head up onto a rooftop and spot a UFO — a common sight in Wah Fu during the 1980s, according to urban legend. Told in linear flashback, this part of Ciao UFO is a relatively conventional coming-of-age drama about children learning first hand about life’s inequities and disappointments, but fully believing they’ll remain untouched because of their friendship. Shot by cinematographer Leung Ming-kai with undersaturated 1980s-style visuals, the young non-professional actors, chosen for their authenticity and naturalism, capture the hopefulness of the time but lace their characters with a cautious wisdom that belies their ages.
“I suppose it’s like a time capsule,” says Kong. “The film we were trying to make was about four children, but there’s a fifth character — Hong Kong. We’re watching how Hong Kong grew up. It wasn’t calculated. We didn’t really plan it like this, but maybe that was always its destiny. Maybe because we couldn’t release back in 2019 [the film] developed a kind of chemistry by releasing now. There’s been three, four years for us to calm ourselves and look clearly, or try to, on how things are nowadays. So when we look at films like this they’re like a time capsule that relates ourselves and our experiences to the film.”
In an oddly prescient way, the story jumps to 2005 when Tsz-kin (now played by former Shine member Chui Tien-you) is scrambling to make ends meet and make them meet quickly in a city where real estate speculation and frantic stock market play is de rigueur. Hoi-yee (Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin) has abandoned any artistic ambitions for a steady, dull job as an accountant, and is engaged to a man she’s not sure she’s all that interested in. Ka-him (Chui’s Shine partner, Wong You-nam) is dealing with cancer, convinced he’s on borrowed time, which has led him to give up on meaningful work or relationships. As Hoi-yee’s wedding approaches, Little Brother (Ng Siu-hin), now a photographer, takes it upon himself to bring the four back together. That’s when the spectre of the UFO reappears. As a viewer you’ll either go along with the fantasy or you won’t.
Tsz-kin (Chui Tien-you) playing the market in 2005, Ciao UFO – Photo courtesy Golden Scene 
Writer Kong Ho-yan and director Patrick Leung Pak-kin – Photo by May James for Zolima CityMag
Unfocused Him (Wong You-nam) and his exasperated girlfriend (Rachel Leung), Ciao UFO – Photo courtesy Golden Scene 
Charlene Choi as Lam Hoi-yee, Ciao UFO – Photo courtesy Golden Scene
The myth behind the film
Ciao UFO isn’t a sci-fi film. Kong cites a small budget that makes the expected science fiction elements impossible and the lack of a sci-fi tradition in local cinema to give it mass appeal. But producer Chin had heard the UFO sighting myths too, so she and Kong dug in and found some residents who claim to have seen the UFO back in the 1980s.
Kong says his is a fan of speculative fiction and writers like Stephen King, pointing to the coming-of-age classic Stand by Me as the kernel of inspiration for Ciao UFO. “I’d wanted to explore the urban legend of the Wah Fu UFO for a very long time, and I was curious why no one had made a film based on it yet. It’s so cinematic,” he says.
Kong has yet to make the leap into directing but hopes to soon: he’s currently working on his next fantasy-laced script. With the director’s chair on the horizon, he considers himself fortunate to have worked with Leung.
“I worked with some other new directors over the past years and I didn’t realise just how experienced and how much technical expertise Patrick had when I was working with him,” says Kong, noting Leung’s efficiency as well as old school creative skill. Leung chalks it up to learning the trade by shooting on film, without monitors and the comfort of digital cameras. “He knew immediately how we were going to shoot the scene, and what it would look like,” marvels Kong. “It’s something I’d never seen before or since. That’s experience, and it’s not something new filmmakers like me can easily get nowadays.”
Leung and Kong were partnered by Chin, who’d worked with Kong on his second script, Ho Cheuk-tin’s 2023 property farce Over My Dead Body. After studying film at university in Essex, Kong made his way back to Hong Kong and started his writing career as web novelist Mr Pizza, writing the basis for Chan’s film. He went on to a horror anthology for television, also in 2014 (Fierce Hunt), which was perhaps unsurprisingly based on urban legends. For still unknown reasons, “Amy made we watch some of Patrick’s older films,” says Kong, prompting Leung to interject, “Oh, you poor thing.”
Kong watched Leung’s 1997 genre mash-up that Chin produced, Task Force. “Amy said, ‘We’re going to do something like this,’” says Kong. Chin likely turned to Leung for his versatility. Working since the 1980s, Leung started out as an assistant director on John Woo’s New Wave classics A Better Tomorrow (1986) and Hard Boiled (1992), and Ann Hui’s Zodiac Killers before finally co-scripting Woo’s Bullet in the Head (1990) and making his directorial debut in 1996 with under-the-radar gem Somebody Up There Likes Me. He’s worked in action, comedy, rom-com, fantasy and horror making him the ideal choice for a micro-budgeted science fiction-tinged drama. Of course, “I don’t think this is sci-fi movie. It’s a story about people,” argues Leung.
While it isn’t a genre movie, genre elements seep into the storytelling that’s resulted in the film’s defining time shifting story and bittersweet reflection. As Kong describes it, the dual track narrative evolved rather than kicked off the writing process. “Chan Tsz-kin’s was the arc we finished first, but after we did, there was a feeling among us that the story shouldn’t end in 1985, that it should also move into the 90s and 2000s, because we wanted to follow these friends.”
It’s the friends’ unmet expectations and disappointments that are powering the film’s groundswell of modest but persistent support. “It’s about how Hong Kong people, ordinary people, grow,” says Leung. “And in that way yes, it’s reflective. It’s so strange. It’s like prophecy, but we didn’t intend to project what might happen. Like I said about cycles, after eight years, things happen and now it’s a cultural text that’s changed too.”
Ciao UFO is currently in cinemas.