LAPost/Los Angeles, CA (Oct. 7, 2026) — By: Richard Ren/LAPost

Herman Yau does not talk about himself as a “master filmmaker.” Even after decades in Hong Kong cinema and a career that has moved freely between cult films, commercial genre pictures and socially conscious dramas, he tends to frame his work in simpler terms: What is happening around him, and who is not being seen?

That question is at the heart of We’re Nothing at All, which Yau brought to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts on Oct. 7 for its first West Coast roadshow screening in the U.S. The director appeared at The Ray Stark Family Theater with stars Jiang Yik Sang (AK) and Ansonbean (Chan Ngai Sun), and spoke with LAPost ahead of the screening.

Rather than beginning with genre or box office, Yau talked about Hong Kong society, the news, class and the people who rarely find themselves at the center of a film.

“Our society on the surface seems very open and accepting,” Yau said. “But that only represents certain circles. It doesn’t represent the whole society.”

That distinction provides the starting point for We’re Nothing at All, a film that initially presents itself as a police investigation into a double-decker bus explosion before gradually shifting its focus toward two young men, Hui Jai (Jiang Yik Sang) and Ike (Ansonbean).

As the investigation unfolds, the film reveals the men’s relationship, troubled family backgrounds, childhood trauma and experiences with homophobia and social marginalization. The police procedural becomes less a destination than an entry point into the lives of people who exist outside the boundaries of what a supposedly “open” society is prepared to accept.

For Yau, the issue is not simply LGBTQ+ representation. It is who gets to be represented — and under what conditions.

“Many Hong Kong films about LGBTQ+ subjects in the past focused on the middle class or intellectuals,” Yau said. “This time, we wanted to put the camera on the more grassroots underclass.”

That distinction is crucial to his approach.

Economic security, education, appearance, family support and social status can dramatically alter how an LGBTQ+ person experiences the same city, Yau argues.

“Some grassroots LGBTQ+ people have no money. They are poor, they may not be good-looking, and they have no social status. They are very different from middle-class LGBTQ+ people.”

Yau even compares the divide to something as ordinary as travel. Some middle-class Hong Kong residents may have gone to Thailand on vacation, he noted, while some people at the grassroots level have never even flown on an airplane.

The point is not the destination. It is the distance between two versions of the same city.

“Some people say, ‘I can accept anything,’” Yau said. “But when something actually happens in front of them and affects their own lives, their reaction can be completely different.”

That tension gives We’re Nothing at All much of its social charge. The film is less interested in presenting a reassuring image of tolerance than in asking how far that tolerance extends when abstract acceptance becomes personal.

Yau’s sensitivity to social currents also comes from his long-standing interest in news.

“I would say news is an inspiration for my work,” he said. “But when I make a film, I don’t want it to become a news report.”

For Yau, paying attention to the news is almost inseparable from being a filmmaker living in Hong Kong.

“I live in Hong Kong, and I live on this Earth. Of course I want to know what is happening.”

In We’re Nothing at All, that awareness sometimes appears in passing details rather than explicit commentary. A brief reference to a fitness center closing, for example, may seem incidental, but for Yau such details can reveal much larger economic and social forces.

“These little details can reflect the impact of the market, the economy and the whole social environment,” he said.

It is a characteristic approach: Rather than turning economic anxiety into a thesis statement, Yau allows it to enter through the lives of ordinary people.

A business closes. A job disappears. A family comes under pressure. A person’s sense of security begins to erode.

The larger social environment becomes visible through small events.

Yau initially did not want We’re Nothing at All to become a straightforward investigation film. But he recognized that a police case could provide audiences with a familiar narrative framework.

The police investigation gives the film forward momentum while allowing Yau to gradually introduce the two young men and the circumstances surrounding their lives.

He also resisted making the police purely functional.

There is a dramatic dimension to their role, even as the investigation provides the structural spine of the film.

Yau is equally cautious about calling the film’s alternating structure an exercise in formal innovation.

“I didn’t particularly want to design a very innovative narrative structure,” he said.

What mattered more was accessibility.

“What matters to me is what method, what way of telling the story, can make it easier for the audience to receive.”

That philosophy helps explain the film’s structure. The investigation offers rationality, procedure and institutional order; the young men’s story introduces emotion, trauma and personal history.

The contrast also reflects differences in social class.

“If you look at the social class of Tam’s character, he is definitely middle class,” Yau said of the character played by Patrick Tam. “His economic ability is definitely at the grassroots level, but his family background is not extremely poor.”

Yau sees another distinction between Tam’s character and the two young men.

“He has a certain kind of rationality that society requires. But the two young people put emotion first. And that is where the tragedy happens.”

The structure therefore becomes more than a storytelling device. It places two different ways of responding to society side by side: one governed by rationality and social expectations, the other by emotional need.

The title We’re Nothing at All is deliberately open-ended.

For Yau, “we” initially refers to the characters themselves, particularly Hui Jai and Ike. But the word eventually expands beyond them.

“For me, there are two meanings,” he said. “The first is the characters in the film, especially Hui Jai and Ike.”

Then comes the second meaning: the audience.

“We also hope the audience will put themselves into it. The audience can become part of the ‘we.’”

That shift is important. The film does not simply ask audiences to sympathize with two marginalized characters. It asks them to consider where they themselves stand in relation to the social boundaries the film depicts.

Would acceptance remain the same if the person affected were a neighbor, a colleague or a member of one’s own family?

Yau does not attempt to answer those questions for the audience. He leaves them inside the film.

Yau’s interest in people on the margins is hardly new.

Since making his directorial debut with The Nocturnal Demon (Bu Ye Tian) in 1987, Yau has worked across horror, crime, action, romance, comedy and social drama. His filmography includes such notorious cult titles as The Untold Story (The Eight Immortals Restaurant: The Untold Story) and Ebola Syndrome, as well as the Troublesome Night series and commercial action films such as the Shock Wave franchise.

He later earned a doctorate in cultural studies from Lingnan University, adding an academic dimension to a filmmaking career already marked by an interest in social behavior and contemporary Hong Kong.

The labels attached to Yau over the years — cult filmmaker, Category III provocateur, commercial genre director, social commentator — only partially describe his trajectory.

A more consistent thread runs through the work: his willingness to look toward people and subjects that mainstream narratives tend to leave at the margins.

That impulse is particularly evident in We’re Nothing at All. Its LGBTQ+ characters are not presented as representatives of an abstract social issue. They are people shaped by class, family, money, trauma and the limitations of their environment.

Yau’s resistance to the language of innovation is striking, particularly given the range of his career.

“I’m not trying to create an innovative method,” he said.

Instead, he sees filmmaking as a matter of finding the right form for the material.

If a police investigation is the most effective way to bring audiences into a story, then the film begins with an investigation.

If a piece of news can communicate the economic pressures surrounding a character, it can appear briefly in the background.

If a small detail can reveal a larger social reality, there is no need to explain it through exposition.

It is a pragmatic philosophy, but also one that reflects the experience of a filmmaker who has spent decades working across very different corners of the Hong Kong film industry.

Yau’s casting process for We’re Nothing at All also reflects that philosophy.

He found Jiang Yik Sang, better known as AK, through a friend and felt that he was right for Hui Jai.

For Ansonbean, the process was less straightforward. Yau had considered other actors, but various circumstances prevented them from taking the role.

He had already watched Ansonbean through Instagram, YouTube and entertainment coverage and had a sense of his personality. When they met, the actor’s determination became decisive.

Ansonbean wanted the part.

Yau was drawn to his passion, impulsiveness and willingness to commit. The actor’s physical appearance, however, was different from the director’s initial conception of Ike. Ansonbean was more muscular than Yau had imagined for the character.

So he began changing his body.

“He would send me a photo almost every week, the same pose, the same angle, so I could see how he was losing weight and changing his body,” Yau said.

The final result was not exactly what Yau had initially envisioned. But that became secondary.

What mattered was the actor’s commitment.

“After working in this industry for so many years, I really believe that when you work with someone who really wants to do something, you don’t need to beg that person.”

The comment doubles as a succinct statement of Yau’s own working philosophy.

After nearly four decades, he remains willing to move between commercial filmmaking and more difficult, socially focused material without settling into a single identity.

Another recent interview with Yau used the phrase “I like that I can still be angry” as its headline. It is an apt description of the impulse behind We’re Nothing at All.

The anger in Yau’s work is not simply about condemning society. It comes from continuing to notice things that make him uncomfortable — people who are overlooked, assumptions that go unchallenged, and gaps between what society says about itself and how people actually live.

That may be why We’re Nothing at All feels connected to both sides of Yau’s career: the filmmaker who once challenged audiences through extreme genre cinema and the filmmaker who now uses a crime narrative to examine class, identity and social exclusion.

A news item can become the doorway to a life.

A police investigation can become the doorway to a love story.

And two people who might otherwise remain invisible can become the center of a film.

For Yau, that is not necessarily innovation.

It is simply another way of looking.

And in We’re Nothing at All, the camera turns toward the people who remain outside the version of Hong Kong that likes to describe itself as open and accepting.

“The audience can become part of the ‘we,’” Yau said.

The invitation is also a challenge: If “we” means everyone, who exactly is still being left out?