A man in silhouette looks out over Victoria Harbour at dusk, the Hong Kong skyline hazy behind him

Narrative · 2026

ROOTS

A personal short film built from footage I shot across Hong Kong in January 2026.

Overview

I shot all of the footage for ROOTS during a trip to Hong Kong in January 2026, without really knowing what the final video was going to be about. I filmed moments I was drawn to and figured I would find the story afterwards.

That process ended up taking around five months. Through editing, rewriting and grading the film over and over, it slowly became something much more personal. A film about perfectionism, comparison, and how easy it is to lose sight of why you started creating in the first place.

The colour followed the same approach. I wanted the film to still feel like the Hong Kong I had actually captured, rather than forcing a heavy look onto it, so most of the grade came down to balancing the footage, controlling saturation and keeping the overall mood consistent.

Stills

Three friends seen from behind at the Hong Kong harbourfront, a cruise ship and a Star Ferry moored across the water

An elderly man rests his head against his hand, deep in thought over a game of Chinese chess at an outdoor table

Low angle looking up at a Hong Kong tenement block, laundry and air conditioning units hanging from every balcony

Rows of hanging temple lanterns and red prayer tags glow amid dark ceiling rafters

Motion-blurred close-up of feet walking across a sunbeam-streaked floor

A man walks alone down a sunlit industrial corridor past steel doors and stacked cages

A hand lights a row of temple candles, incense smoke rising through the firelight

Silhouetted passengers seen from behind inside a ferry cabin, backlit by a hazy Hong Kong skyline through the windows

Spiral incense coils and paper prayer tags hang from a temple ceiling, daylight filtering through the roof

The final film

The final story really only revealed itself during the edit. I kept coming back to the same feeling: I was spending so much time comparing my work and trying to make everything perfect that I had started forgetting why I enjoyed making things at all.

That became the centre of ROOTS.