Papa

Papa (2024)

爸爸

How far can a father's love go?

A 15-year-old boy murders his mother and sister. The father, Nin Yuen, returns to his cafe, haunted by memories of a once-happy family: his wife preparing breakfast, his son playing video games, and his daughter caring for their calico cat. Yuen finds himself unable to hate the living or forget the dead. As they confront life’s cruelty, will Yuen and his son’s strained relationship ever find redemption? 

Date of release
2024-12-05
TMDB
8.1 / 10 (6)
Runtime
2h 10m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Philip Yung Chi-kwong

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Heung Wo Street murder

Papa is a 2024 Hong Kong family drama film directed and written by Philip Yung. Produced by Word by Word and distributed by Golden Scene, it is based on the real-life 2010 Heung Wo Street Murder, in which a mentally unstable son killed his mother and sister, leaving his father as the sole survivor. With Sean Lau, Jo Koo, Dylan So, and Lainey Hung portraying the family, the film is set in the aftermath of the murder and follows the father (Lau) as he navigates survivor guilt and seeks reconciliation with his son (So).

Production

The story of Papa is based on the 2010 Heung Wo Street Murder. On 22 July 2010, a 15-year-old teenager Kan Ka-leung murdered his mother Lam Lin-kam and his younger sister Kan Chung-yue at home, before turning himself in to the police after wandering the streets for a short period. The family, which included the father Kan Fuk-kui, lived together on Heung Wo Street in Tsuen Wan.

In 2011, Philip Yung was invited to join the adaptation of the Heung Wo Street Murder as the screenwriter, after an undisclosed director was impressed by his screenplay draft which later evolved into Port of Call (2015). Yung, who grew up in Tsuen Wan and lived nearby Heung Wo Street, was already familiar with the murder case before the film's production and cited his familiarity with the crime scene as essential for capturing the film's sense of…

Kan eventually softened his stance upon finding that Yung was more interested in adapting the film as a personal story from the father's perspective rather than focusing solely on the murder, and was willing to listen to Kan's inner thoughts. He later agreed to have his story adapted and provided necessary details to the production team.

The screenplay began development in 2012. Adopting a narrative style similar to that of Port of Call and Where the Wind Blows (2022), Yung used a stream of consciousness and wrote the screenplay from the father's perspective, focusing on his navigation of the aftermath of the murder while the arcs of the other characters unfolded around him.

but the project was subsequently stalled in development when the director dropped out to work on a Hong Kong-Chinese film. Yung, still fond of the screenplay and feeling confident in his filmmaking skills after making Port of Call, reached out to the director and had been in talks for seven to eight years to buy back his script.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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