Wong Ka Kui Doc 'Because of You Ka Kui' to Open U.K.'s Odyssey Festival

"Because of You Ka Kui," a documentary about the late Beyond frontman Wong Ka Kui, will open the sixth edition of the Odyssey Film Festival in the U.K. The NGO U.K.-China Film Collab has also picked up the Hong Kong film for local distribution.

The deal took shape in March at FilMart in Hong Kong, where U.K.-China Film Collab appeared alongside the U.K. Film Pavilion. The organization used the same strategy last year with Robin Lee's Hong Kong documentary "Four Trails," which opened Odyssey before reaching wider theatrical release in 2025.

The film comes from Hong Kong director Rosa Pang and revisits Wong, the singer-songwriter who drove Beyond creatively and whose songs shaped a generation of Cantonese-speaking listeners in Hong Kong and beyond. Yip Sai Wing, one of Beyond's founding members, and Leslie Chan, the manager credited with discovering the group, produce.

Pang builds the documentary around interviews with people who knew Wong personally and through work. She sets them beside rare concert recordings, never-before-shown archive material from his early years and previously unreleased footage. The film follows Wong from his first encounters with music through Beyond's rise and his growth as a songwriter and performer, examining his approach to music, his character and his ideals. Pang and Leslie Chan describe the work 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.

The production carries a U.K. connection of its own: 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 runs Sept. 28–Oct. 10 across a number of cinemas and 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 choice reflects 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," she added.

The selection also stretches the fashion theme toward youth culture and music. Beyond's sound and look, which mixed international rock influences with a Hong Kong 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 parts of its program have backing from the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London. If "Four Trails" set the precedent, the distribution pickup signals that Wong's story could reach U.K. cinemas beyond the festival circuit.