Isabella

A police officer in Macau has been suspended and his life is coming apart. The young woman he spends a night with introduces herself properly the next morning: she is the daughter he never knew he had. The two of them start living together; he has no idea what to do, and she has no intention of leaving. Pang Ho-cheung sets it in the Macau of the years before 1999, with the city about to change hands and the characters waiting on handovers of their own. It is colourful, full of music and hot as a summer, with loneliness sitting underneath. Named for Isabella Leong, it competed at Berlin and won the prize for its score. Its subject is not fatherhood but whether you can claim somebody late.