Revisit, directed by Macao-native Harriet Wong Teng-teng, won a Work-In-Progress award at the Festival of Young Cinema (Asia-Europe), held in the city from Jan 5-11, 2024. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Harriet Wong Teng-teng was in tears as she accepted a Work-In-Progress award for her debut feature, Revisit, at the Festival of Young Cinema (Asia-Europe) in Macao.

Doubtless, her young daughter yelling out “Mama!” as she watched Wong accepting her award at Macao’s Emperor Cinemas complex had added to the emotion, but what had fueled it at first was getting recognized after spending over a decade in the industry.

Wong is among an emerging generation of Macao filmmakers trying to establish an identity for the former Portuguese enclave’s cinema industry. Macao, a city with a population of less than 700,000, produces only a handful of small-budgeted films each year. “We are lacking producers, but directors are coming up,” Wong says. 

Revisit, directed by Macao-native Harriet Wong Teng-teng, won a Work-In-Progress award at the Festival of Young Cinema (Asia-Europe), held in the city from Jan 5-11, 2024. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

She hopes that the festival will help draw attention — and investors — to Macao, while encouraging more aspirants to commit to making films with a distinctly local flavor.

Revisit centers around a woman who returns to Macao from Beijing to care for her grandmother, reconnecting with her hometown and history in the process. It took Wong 10 years since she graduated from the acclaimed Beijing Film Academy with a master’s degree in filmmaking, the first person from Macao to do so, to make the film.

“When I went to Beijing I found that they had lots of resources,” Wong says. 

Wong (center) gives her acceptance speech at the award ceremony, held at the Emperor Cinemas in Macao. (PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

She believes there are unique aspects of her hometown that can be explored through cinema, the most obvious of these being a collective search for identity, especially given Macao’s centuries-old role as an international trading hub.

“Macao people’s relationships with each other are subtly different from people in other cities. They bond in different ways and through the tiniest of details,” Wong says. “Most of Macao residents are not originally from Macao. So we are always looking for an identity, and that’s in our films as well. Though you are telling a story through cinema, you are also exploring things about your own life.”