Palimpest: The Story of a Name #HKFilmGala2026

R:Film Festival

PLAY TRAILER

Cantonese (Thai & English Subtitles) Spanning eight decades and four continents, filmmaker and editor Mary Stephen embarks on a personal investigation into her English surname. It is not intended to be a narcissistic exploration but rather an effort to uncover the dissonances and the contradictions in our heritage that, in spite of our all-too-human desire for harmony and continuity, are the fundamental elements that shape us. It is in this spirit that this intimate journey unfolds. Drawing from her father’s home movies and diaries, family photographs, her own travel footage, fragments of oral history and official archives, Stephen constructs a layered, polyphonic narrative where personal memory and collective history converge. The film traverses a turbulent period in China’s past—marked by the fall of a fading dynasty, civil war, Japanese invasion, and the eventual rise of the Communist Party. Against this backdrop, Hong Kong— under British colonial rule since 1842—emerges as a pa