All Shall Be Well (2024) – Review & Cast

What happens when love outlives its legal recognition? All Shall Be Well, winner of the Teddy Award at Berlinale 2024, is a quiet but devastating Hong Kong drama about a lesbian couple who spent over four decades together — only for everything to unravel after one partner’s sudden death. As property, rituals, and even grief are disputed by blood relatives, the film dares to ask: when the law fails to recognize your love, what truly remains?

All Shall Be Well (2026) – Review & Cast

All Shall Be Well Summary

Title: All Shall Be Well
Movie Info: Chinhina - HongKong (2024)
Length: 93 minutes
Is All Shall Be Well GL? Yes
Genre: Romance, Drama, Girl's love

Plot

Pat and Angie have lived as life partners for more than 40 years, building a peaceful and loving home together. But when Pat suddenly passes away, Angie’s world crumbles — not just from grief, but from the legal and social realities that follow.

All Shall Be Well (2025) – Review & Cast

Despite having discussed their intentions for decades, Pat never signed her drafted will. The couple never registered their partnership abroad, and Pat’s property — including their shared apartment — remains legally unprotected. As Pat’s biological family steps in to claim control of the estate, Angie is slowly pushed out of the home they built together.

What once felt like a warm extended family now reveals sharp teeth. Legal loopholes, passive-aggressive family members, and unspoken resentments converge to deny Angie even the basic right to mourn with dignity. In the face of this injustice, she must decide whether to fight — or to move on, holding onto the memories and the quiet knowledge of a love that was always real.

All Shall Be Well Cast

Charactor

Pat
Lin Lin Li
by
Lin Lin Li

A practical, charismatic elder lesbian who led a successful life in business, supported her relatives financially, and deeply loved Angie — though her failure to formalize their legal arrangements proves devastating.

Lin Lin Li

Her character embodies the contradictions of a generation caught between tradition and modernity: loving but ambiguous, generous but negligent, deeply committed but unable to protect that commitment on paper.

Angie
Patra Au
by
Patra Au

The surviving partner left to pick up the pieces. Strong-willed, emotionally composed, and unwilling to be erased.

Patra Au

Au’s performance is quietly extraordinary — a masterclass in micro-expression. Even her silences ache. She plays Angie with grace, bitterness, warmth, and above all, clarity.

Director

Ray Yeung

Ray Yeung (楊曜愷)

Following his acclaimed film Suk Suk, Yeung continues his exploration of queer aging and social invisibility in Chinese-speaking contexts. In All Shall Be Well, he elevates his vision further, blending minimalist storytelling with sharp legal and emotional commentary. Inspired by real cases, Yeung draws a sobering portrait of a love that persists — even when the world refuses to see it.

MOVIE HIGHLIGHT

Inheritance Law & Same-Sex Couples
The film exposes the cruel gaps in property and inheritance laws for same-sex partners. Despite living decades together, Angie has no legal standing — not on property deeds, not in funeral decisions, not in the eyes of the court.

“You’ve Always Been Like Family”
The illusion of familial acceptance is pierced: the film illustrates how easy it is for blood relatives to “unrecognize” queerness when money is involved.

Hong Kong’s Housing & Aging Crisis
The cramped apartments, the urgency around inheritance, and the pressures on the elderly all reflect a larger problem of housing injustice — one that disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ individuals with no biological heirs.

All Shall Be Well Review

Review

👍 Movie Review Score:4.6/5
Story
Chemistry
Acting
Production
Ending

All Shall Be Well is a love story wrapped in legal tragedy. Like Ray Yeung’s earlier work Suk Suk, it paints queerness in later life not through grand declarations but through daily routines, faded photos, and quiet companionship. But here, the tenderness is fractured — not by time or desire, but by bureaucracy and bloodline.

The film explores the heartbreaking fragility of unrecognized love. Pat was resourceful, powerful, and generous — a woman who once ran a textile business and supported her extended family. But her fatal flaw was the all-too-familiar procrastination: the will remained unsigned, the flat undocumented, the marriage unregistered.

Angie, in contrast, is not the passive grieving widow we expect. Played with quiet steel by Patra Au, she challenges, resists, and eventually reclaims her own dignity — not through legal victory, but through spiritual resilience.

Rather than sensationalizing conflict, the film lingers in the gray zones: a family dinner that masks discomfort, a ritual that omits true kinship, a balcony light reinstalled in a government flat — symbols of quiet survival. This isn’t just a drama about inheritance, but about who gets to define family, and who is left behind when laws fail to catch up with love.

All Shall Be Well Information

Awards & Recognition

  • 🏆 74th Berlin International Film Festival – Teddy Award for Best Feature Film (2024)
    One of the most prestigious LGBTQ+ film awards worldwide, recognizing films that offer powerful queer representation.

  • 🏅 43rd Hong Kong Film Awards – Best Film (Nominee)
    A rare lesbian-themed film to be shortlisted for Hong Kong’s highest cinematic honor.

  • 🏅 18th Asian Film Awards – Best Supporting Actress (Nominee: Lin Lin Li 李琳琳)
    Celebrating a standout performance that added emotional weight and realism to the film’s family dynamics.

Where to Watch

Related Links

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