Secret in the Box Brings 1974 Hong Kong Murder to
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- "Secret in the Box" held its press conference at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival as a Golden Goblet Awards main competition entry, revisiting Hong Kong's 1974 Happy Valley Box Murder.
- Director Frankie Tam based the film on Hong Kong's first murder case solved entirely through forensic evidence and without eyewitness testimony, setting it against 1970s Hong Kong's social atmosphere.
- Zhang Songwen delivers his first fully Cantonese-language big-screen performance, portraying a repressed small-time man caught between competing versions of reality.
- Zhang defended the dialect choice as essential, saying Mandarin for a native Hong Konger would be "mismatched" and citing Cantonese's "thousand year history."
- Patrick Tam, appearing alongside Zhang for the first time, said he had "been looking forward to it for a long time" and called Zhang "really very capable."
- Frankie Tam said editing mirrored criminal investigation and that the filmmakers adopted a "parallel universe approach," refusing to deliver a verdict after 50 years of unresolved public discussion about the case.
Why it matters: The Golden Goblet competition slot elevates a 50-year-old Hong Kong cold case onto the Shanghai festival's main slate, and Zhang Songwen's deliberate choice of Cantonese for his first fully dialect performance treats language as non-negotiable for regional credibility in prestige Chinese cinema. Tam's refusal to adjudicate the case keeps a half-century debate alive rather than closing it, handing the verdict to audiences.
