“Because of You Ka Kui,” a documentary on the late Beyond frontman Wong Ka Kui, will open the sixth Odyssey Film Festival in the U.K., with NGO U.K.-China Film Collab also picking up the Hong Kong film for local distribution.
Discussions began in March at FilMart in Hong Kong, which U.K.-China Film Collab attended with the U.K. Film Pavilion. The NGO deployed a similar approach last year with Robin Lee’s Hong Kong documentary “Four Trails,” which opened Odyssey and then played more widely in cinemas in 2025.
The film, from Hong Kong director Rosa Pang, revisits Wong, the singer-songwriter who drove Beyond creatively and whose songs shaped a generation of Cantonese-speaking listeners in Hong Kong and further afield. The producers are Yip Sai Wing, one of Beyond’s founding members, and Leslie Chan, the manager who is credited with finding the group.
The film is built around interviews with people who knew Wong both personally and through work. These sit alongside rare concert recordings, never-before-shown archive material from his early years and footage that has not been released until now. It follows Wong from his first brushes with music through the rise of Beyond and his growth as a songwriter and performer, looking at his approach to music, his character and his ideals. Pang and Leslie Chan described it as a dedication to “a legend, an ordinary person, through memories of those who truly knew him. The film seeks to rediscover the real Wong Ka Kui.”
Wong died in an accident in Japan in 1993, at age 31. The band’s songs have kept finding new listeners since.
There is also a U.K. link. The film’s interview with Beyond founding member William Tang was shot in London.
After an earlier theatrical run in Asia, “Because of You Ka Kui” will have its U.K. premiere as Odyssey’s opening film. The festival will run Sept. 28–Oct. 10 at a number of cinemas as well as online. Each edition is built around a different theme, and this year’s is #Fashion.
“Beyond did not simply follow the fashion of their generation, in many ways, they helped create it, like Oasis for the U.K.,” said Hiu Man Chan, Odyssey’s artistic director and founder of U.K.-China Film Collab. “Their music, image, attitude and style became part of the cultural memory of Hong Kong and influenced generations across Asia. Fashion is not only about what an era wears; it is also about how a generation chooses to see and express itself. That makes ‘Because of You Ka Kui’ a very meaningful film to launch this year’s Odyssey.”
Hiu Man Chan said the opening pick reflected the festival’s aim to treat fashion as more than clothing and catwalks, and to explore how film, music, visual identity and pop culture feed into one another. Bringing the film to the U.K. was “my true honor,” Hiu Man Chan added.
The selection also stretches the fashion theme to cover youth culture and music. Beyond’s sound and look, which mixed international rock influences with a Hong Kong that was changing fast through the 1980s and early 1990s, became bound up with a generation of young fans. Yip has called the documentary a rare chance to find the “ordinary person” behind the bandleader and icon.
Malaysian company Abnormal Studios launched “Because of You Ka Kui” internationally at FilMart in March, as the lead title of its new international sales arm.
“‘Because of You Ka Kui’ is not about nostalgia. The honesty of Wong Ka Kui as a person – in what he thought, felt and believed – continues to resonate today,” Pang said.
Leslie Chan said that after hearing all the interviews, “I really felt that I came to know Ka Kui all over again.”
Odyssey’s sixth edition will program older films alongside new ones. The festival’s opening and some of its program have backing from the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London.
