Zhang Songwen’s ‘Secret in the Box’ Brings Infamous Hong Kong Murder Case to Shanghai Competition

“Secret in the Box,” a period thriller revisiting Hong Kong’s 1974 Happy Valley Box Murder, held its press conference at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, with director Frankie Tam Kwong-yuen and lead actor Zhang Songwen discussing the real cold case at the heart of the Golden Goblet Awards main competition entry.

Directed by Hong Kong’s Frankie Tam, the film draws on Hong Kong’s first murder case solved entirely through forensic evidence and without eyewitness testimony. The story unfolds against the social atmosphere of 1970s Hong Kong, using the cold case to probe darker currents of human behavior.

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Zhang, delivering his first fully Cantonese-language performance on the big screen, portrays a repressed small-time man caught between competing versions of reality. The actor said that performing in Cantonese was essential to the role’s credibility. “I believe dialect, especially Cantonese, history, it has a thousand year history,” he said. “This story takes place in Hong Kong. If I were to portray a native Hong Konger with only Mandarin, it would be mismatched. Dialect allows the audience to feel a stronger sense of belief.”

Actor Patrick Tam, appearing alongside Zhang for the first time, described the experience as one he had long anticipated. “I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time,” Tam said. “He’s really very capable.”

Frankie Tam said the editing process mirrored the act of criminal investigation, with each cut oriented toward uncovering answers the footage had withheld. Rather than adjudicating guilt, the filmmakers opted to leave the question of truth open to viewers. “The discussion about this case has never stopped in the past 50 years,” Tam said. “When weighing up our creative choices, we could not deliver a verdict, we refused to provide a definitive answer. People often only believe what they wish to believe. Thus, we ultimately adopted a parallel universe approach, allowing the audience to choose which version of the truth they wanted to embrace.”