When a generation of young filmmakers harbouring bold creative ambitions and a desire to tell stories about the changing modern world stormed the Hong Kong industry in the 80s, one of the most dynamic movements in world cinema was born: the Hong Kong New Wave. But as a new film season in London, presented by the Hong Kong Film Festival UK, highlights, sometimes its most powerful stories are not bombastic tales of bloodshed or kaleidoscopic romantic dramas, but those told by individuals perpetually searching for their own true identities.

Clara Law is a name that doesn’t harbour the same global celebrity as contemporaries like Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood for Love) and John Woo (Hard-Boiled). But her stories of displacement, self-reflection and diaspora feel uniquely urgent at times of cataclysmic world conflicts and tense global politics. “It’s my existence,” she tells Dazed, reflecting on the pensive themes that endure throughout her work. “The search for answers and where I belong has been there from the very beginning.”

Born in the former Portuguese colony of Macau in 1957, Law’s family moved to nearby British Hong Kong when she was just 10 years old. It was a time, she remembers, when this “postmodern” city was defined by its noise, bustle, and distinctly multi-cultural identity. “Coming from a very traditional Chinese family, my Mum would tell me not to talk to anyone who wasn’t Chinese,” she recalls. “But then I was sent to an English school where you weren’t allowed to speak Chinese.” Though her Grandfather had once recited Chinese poetry to her as a child, it was English Literature that enticed her to Hong Kong University; her filmmaking ambitions later brought her to London. “All that time, I was looking for my identity and the meaning of my existence,” she says.

The four films that comprise the ICA’s ‘Forever Foreigner: The Films of Clara Law’ season chart a cinematic journey of migration, platforming key works across Law’s career set in London, New York, Australia (Law’s home since 1994) and Hong Kong and Macau. Ahead of the season’s debut on September 20, the director guides us through the stories that have imbued her films with such enduring power and poignancy, speaking to her never-ending search for belonging.

THEY SAY THE MOON IS FULLER HERE (1985) 

Law’s debut feature is a simple but powerful drama that foregrounds cultural displacement and compatibility through careful shot composition, minutes-spanning long-takes, and cosmic synthesiser music that makes an autumnal London feel truly otherworldly.

It follows a Goldsmiths arts student, played by Law herself, attempting to adapt a classic Chinese ballet for British dancers. When she meets a Chinese engineering student struggling to reconcile his artistic ambitions with his allegiances to the Beijing government, she soon finds herself in an uneasy ménage à trois that leaves her questioning her identity. “I thought I’d feel at ease in London,” says Law, who was the first Chinese student at the UK’s National Film and Television School in the mid-80s. “But I missed home very much. Even though I was from Hong Kong, a colony of Britain, my VISA status was ‘alien’. I realised that this wasn’t my place, and that I was not that British.”

Seismic shifts relating to the autonomy of her home country further complicated these feelings. Production was completed just months after the governments of the UK and Mainland China signed the agreement that would see Hong Kong return to Chinese rule in 1997. “They were deciding our future, and we had no part in it,” remembers Law. “And people treated that news with indifference.”

Screening and director Q&A at the ICA — 12:20, Saturday 20 September

FAREWELL CHINA (1990)

Returning to Hong Kong, Law cemented a creative partnership with future husband Eddie Fong, a writer, producer, and occasional director with credits on Hong Kong New Wave classics like Patrick Tam’s Nomad. One of their first collaborations would cast emerging superstar Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love) and fellow screen icon Tony Leung Ka-fai in a sweeping drama distinguished by its lush, Edward Hopper-inspired visuals.

The film follows a poor Chinese man (Leung) who illegally emigrates to the States in search of his wayward partner (Cheung), who made the same journey a year prior in search of better opportunities for their family. What he discovers is a vibrant Manhattan full of mullets, nightclubs and Latin American soul-jazz, but also dilapidated homes, shady pizza parlours, and Chinese restaurants reinforced with iron gates and bulletproof windows. The mystery of whether the beautiful Hung had become intoxicated by the former, or fallen victim to the latter, is what drives this brooding drama forward.

“After I finished my graduation film, I got into cable television and became the producer for a programme researching Chinese that stay in New York,” explains Law. “I had the opportunity to interview many immigrants, and a lot of them were Chinese women suffering from mental issues; it was a phenomenon.” Moved by these stories, and a news report of a Chinese woman committing suicide by Metro train in Tokyo, Law returned to Hong Kong and began writing a script with Fong.

The story would evolve further after the duo were profoundly anguished by reports of developments surrounding Beijing student protests in June 1989. “The switching off of all the lights in Tiananmen Square that night was so deeply ingrained in us,” says Law, “that we ended up changing the ending of the film.”

Screening and director Q&A at the ICA – 12:20, Sunday 21 September

THE GODDESS OF 1967 (2000) 

In 2000, after relocating to Melbourne, Law completed a surreal road movie guided by a vintage Citroën DS car, The Goddess of 1967. The film concerns a handsome young Japanese web-surfer who travels to Australia to buy his dream motor – but the blind, orange-haired manic-pixie-dream-girl he meets (Rose Byrne) turns out to have a complicated relationship with the vehicle. A dreamlike journey across the Outback in search of the car’s original owner ensues, with the characters exploring their complex pasts (sexual assaults and religious fanatic parents included) through extended, time-rupturing flashbacks.

An intoxicating surf guitar dance number marks a memorable mid-point highlight, but it’s the scintillating visual style of The Goddess of 1967 that is its most impressive asset. At times, the gleaming surfaces, back projections and delirious floating cameras make the film feel like a 90s music video. “I’m a very visual person,” says Law. “And so I’m always looking for references in paintings, photography, and art books.” Struck by the tinted monotone photos of Michael Kenna, and images from “really old films from the 30s”, Law and her Director of Photography utilised bleach bypass photography to create a distinct visual signature. “I loved the colours it created,” she says.

Screening and director Q&A at the ICA – 19:00, Saturday 20 September

DRIFTING PETALS (2021) 

A low-budget, self-funded project shot on location in Hong Kong and Macau, Drifting Petals feels like a stark stylistic departure from the other productions featured in this retrospective. Conceived off the back of the 2015 Umbrella Movement protests, and featuring explicit references to past upheavals in Macau and Hong Kong, Law knew that traditional financing would be impossible for such a project in the late 10s political climate. But by going DIY, she could also achieve her ambitions without industry compromise. “We bought a camera and set up a home studio to do all our editing and grading,” she recalls. “It was an experiment, but we knew it would be worth a try.” 

Weaving handheld digital camerawork with historical stills and protest footage, Drifting Petals is an elusive production that feels rooted in the real world, and yet distinctly lost within it. An enigmatic, documentary-like meditation on alienation amidst societal transformation, it follows an unseen narrator (voiced by Law) and a piano student (Jeff Lai) who wander the empty streets of an expansive metropolis, encountering strange, spectral figures in the night, in a timely rumination on loss and longing for the past.

Contemporary political tensions were not the only source of inspiration for Drifting Petals. “I had a brother who died when I was very young,” she says. “And from as young as 10, I found myself questioning mortality and the transience of life.” This perspective, she claims, has guided her life and existence ever since: “Where could I find peace, and the meaning of doing things, when it could all be gone in a tick?” She concludes. “Somehow, I found that it could be film.”

Screening and director Q&A at the ICA – 14:00, Sunday 28 September

Clara Law’s films are screening as part of Hong Kong Film Festival UK, which runs 12-28 September at various venues across London