During a Mid-Autumn Festival dinner in Hong Kong, a family gathers in anticipation of a long-awaited son. The room is filled with food, blessings, and practiced warmth, but beneath the appearance of harmony, a fault line begins to show. At the edge of the celebration, the woman carrying the child watches the woman preparing to raise him: one bound to a child she cannot keep, the other to a motherhood she cannot fully claim. Year of production 2026 Length 18' Countries UK, Hong Kong Shooting FormatDigital Aspect Ratio 1.66:1 Dialogue Cantonese, Mandarin, Henanese, English
Director Anatole Sloan Production CompanyA Reel Issues Films Producers Luke Walton, Mark Blaney Associate Producer Hatty Haines Writer Anatole Sloan Director of PhotographyRui Jiang Ong Editor Christopher CF Chow BFE Production ManagerMiaow Ng Sound Mixer Ben Mason, Ruth Rainey Sound EditorJaz Harvey Production Designer Ezer Sloan Art Director LCM Costume DesignerPerpetua Ip Hair & Make-Up Artist Joyce Wong ColoristVanessa Aparicio Line ProducerKitty Yeung 1st Assistant Director & Casting Director Patrick Wai Audio Post-Production We Are Audio Cast Karena Lam, Yiyi Liu, Patra Au, Alan Luk, Eva Mak, Siti Fatimah, Bella Yau, Wing Yau, Belinda Chan
Director's Statement OUR CHILD was selected as the 2024 Drama Recipient of The Pitch Film Fund, a UK-based short film fund supporting emerging filmmakers. Written and directed by Anatole Sloan, the film was developed through The Pitch as a Hong Kong / UK coproduction. Set over a single Mid-Autumn Festival evening, the film was shot on location on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. The ensemble cast is led by Karena Lam, Patra Au, Alan Luk, and Yiyi Liu, bringing together established Hong Kong screen talent and an emerging mainland Chinese performer in a story shaped by language, class, and belonging. OUR CHILD began with Genesis 16, the story of Hagar and Sarai, an account in which infertility, slavery, and surrogate motherhood are bound together by a household’s desire for a child. The film does not retell the passage directly, but carries forward its social critique into a contemporary Hong Kong family, where the longing for a son exposes questions of motherhood, power, visibility, and unequal dependence. At the centre of the film are two women from opposite worlds, bound to the same unborn child. Through the rituals and silences of a family celebration, OUR CHILD examines how an apparent good – a desire for a child – can become a source of deep tensions of class, belonging, infertility, and love.
