The Last Dance: A Film About Death That Made All of Hong Kong Cry

What it won was not just box office. It gave a whole city permission to think about how to say goodbye properly.

The Last Dance (破.地獄) opened in Hong Kong in 2024 and broke the territory's opening-day box office record for a local film, taking in HKD 6 million on day one. It went on to become the highest-grossing Hong Kong-made film in the territory's history. At the 43rd Hong Kong Film Awards it received 18 nominations, the most of any film that year, and Michelle Wai won Best Actress for her role in it.

Those numbers are notable, but they are not why the film actually moves people.

What the film is about

Directed by Anselm Chan, the film follows a struggling wedding planner, played by Dayo Wong, who moves into the funeral trade and partners with a Taoist ritual master, played by Michael Hui. The ritual at the centre of the film, 破地獄 ("breaking open hell"), is a real Taoist funeral practice, performed to release the deceased from suffering.

At first, Wong's character treats it as just another way to make a living. Slowly, he learns that the work is not a performance for the dead. It is a way of helping the living actually complete a goodbye.

Where the film earns it

Dayo Wong is best known as a stand-up comedian, and here he shows something entirely different: a quiet, slow-building grief. Michael Hui, one of Hong Kong cinema's veteran names, plays the traditionalist ritual master with real weight and no theatrics.

Michelle Wai plays a daughter trying to inherit her father's trade in an industry that traditionally passes only to sons. That subplot is not really about funerals. It is about who gets to carry a family's rituals and memory forward. Her Best Actress win for the role is well earned.

Why this film is telling the same story we are

The film's central idea is that ritual is not a performance staged for the dead. 破地獄 literally means breaking someone out of hell, but the people actually being helped are the ones left standing, learning how to go on living.

That runs in the same direction as what we do. A voice book does not bring anyone back. What it gives the living is a real, concrete way to sit with someone's memory, slowly, without rushing past it, avoiding it, or reaching for a shortcut (we wrote a separate piece on AI voice cloning and why that particular shortcut is not one we will take).

A film and a book, saying the same thing in different ways: saying goodbye properly is itself a way of remembering well.

Worth watching.