EPHWAIPI

Directed by
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Two girls fantasise to make a declaration. To the World.

Youth is overrated. Depression, cynicism, rebel. Poetic, and beautiful. How caricatured. Like how everything sounds better in French, even if they were merely google translated. And we are here to destroy the camouflage. Back to the reckless but satisfied souls and bodies.

Hong Kong directors Candice Ng and Kitty Yeung's film ephwaipi, a homophone of ‘FYP’ (Final Year Project) also acted as their graduate thesis film, and is the manifesto of two teenage girls about gender, romance and labour exploitation. Together, they seek to declare freedom from their teachers, lovers, bosses, and the most notorious villain of all — social norms.

ephwaipi is not an ordinary coming-of-age story featuring love-struck school girls or caged Catholic girls. Instead, the two leads are strong independent women, but they also have their fair share of vulnerability. They want to change the world, but are afraid of being the ones to change it. So they fantasised.

Their struggles are greatly intertwined with social norms and the prevailing culture of Hong Kong. It includes moments of breaking the fourth wall, and features behind-the-scenes footage of the directors while filming. By using this unconventional format, Yeung and Ng hope to reflect and capture a new way of storytelling, and to challenge how films are traditionally made to gratify the audience.

Candice Ng "We were who we were when we made this short. And we will never go back to that state of mind. That's what's so special about this story: it freezes time for us. "


Kitty Yeung "This is just a teenage-girl diary from two brats, I do wonder what will I feel when I re-watch it after 10 years, will I be shameful on who I become? It’s too painful to be an adult, that’s why we need a film to remind us the state of youth. This film was a stage for us to create freely and 'rebelliously’. "

Read Nowness Asia interview here

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