Ciao UFO

In 1985, Kin grows up in Wah Fu Estate beside two loyal friends, Heem and Hoyi, and the trio shares a simple, stubborn dream of something bigger. Heem battles leukemia and dreads the constant medications that keep him going, while Hoyi bears the heavy weight of parental expectations, pressed to excel academically and become a professional. Kin’s father, a sailor who loves the night sky, teaches Kin to read the stars and spins stories about distant worlds and hidden ships. Their childhood spark becomes a shared fantasy: the three friends imagine building their own spaceship, the “Wah Fu One,” to leave Earth behind and seek out aliens one day.

Everything changes when Kin’s father falls seriously ill during a voyage and slips into a coma. Kin, Heem, and Hoyi, along with Hoyi’s younger brother Ho-fung, sneak to the rooftop of Wah Fu and glimpse a UFO concealed among the clouds. Kin desperately wishes for the aliens to rescue his father, and the moment imprints itself as a turning point in all their lives. When Kin returns to the hospital, his father wakes briefly but cannot recognize him. Instead, the father asks about his two daughters and reveals, in a quiet, devastating detail, that he once had another family—an truth that shatters Kin’s sense of belonging. The news leaves Kin raw and angry, and he confesses to his friends that he wishes he had never laid eyes on the UFO or learned the truth. The revelation drives a wedge between them, and the four friends eventually drift apart, their once-bright bond dimming under the weight of memory and reality.

Twelve years later, in 1997, Kin is an orphan who has lost his mother as well as his father. With school behind him, he is forced to support himself and begins to reconnect with a former classmate, Yan, who hires him to repair her computer. The rekindled closeness between them deepens quickly, and one night Yan persuades Kin to sneak back into their old secondary school. There, she reveals that she has kept, all these years, the homemade stargazing device Kin once built, a quiet treasure that she still cherishes. Kin urges her to hold onto it, unwilling to erase the past’s fragile fragments.

Meanwhile, Hoyi has graduated with an accounting degree and hopes to work at the Space Museum, but a lack of astronomy background blocks that dream. She ends up joining an accounting firm, where she finds the work joyless, though she remains determined to chart a meaningful course. Heem, still convinced that the cosmos holds answers, speaks out on a television program after criticizing a sensational segment about dissection of aliens. A scientist on the show dismisses his claims, and Heem tries to push the conversation further by revealing that Kin and Hoyi also witnessed the UFO. Yet both friends are too absorbed in their own lives to notice the broadcast.

Kin’s fortunes take another dramatic turn when Yan’s life becomes entangled with a billionaire, and Kin discovers that Yan is his mistress. He accepts the truth and decides to support Yan financially, choosing to face the complicated reality rather than sever ties. Seeking a path to improvement, Kin begins speculating in stocks, guided by the newspaper stall owner where he works. The 1997 financial crisis soon erodes his efforts, and Kin loses everything, sinking into despair. Yan later reveals that she is pregnant with the billionaire’s child and plans to move to Vancouver, but Kin does not beg her to stay or try to change her course.

Back in Kin’s orbit, Hoyi’s life also moves forward in unexpected ways. She begins dating Austin, a senior accountant at her firm. After passing her professional exams, she quietly accepts plans to marry, but Austin informs his parents of the engagement without consulting Hoyi, treating the future as a rigid timetable rather than a shared choice. The news leaves her with a quiet ambivalence, and she does not openly contradict the expectations surrounding her.

As the wedding day approaches, Ho-fung—a beacon of persistence in the memory of their youth—tries to reunite the old friends. He locates Heem at his family’s stationery shop, where Heem reveals that his leukemia has resurfaced. Ho-fung also tries to track Kin, but the search is scattered; instead, he emails every “Chan Tsz-kin” in Hong Kong in a hopeful hail mary. On the wedding day, Heem reconnects with Hoyi and brings an old videotape that memorializes their childhood promise to travel into space together. Austin discards the memory as childish, a moment that forces Hoyi to reevaluate the life she has chosen and the path she is about to embark on.

Kin finally arrives at the ceremony, and the three friends—Kin, Heem, and Hoyi—revisit the night they saw the UFO and reflect on whether they have fulfilled the dreams that bound them as children. In a poignant turn, Hoyi abandons the wedding and leaves with Kin and Heem, leaving the guests confused and the plans unsettled. Ho-fung steps forward to recount the night they all saw the UFO, declaring that he still believes in aliens, a vow to hold onto the sense of possibility that once defined them all. In a bittersweet closing, the trio reunites to watch the videotape again, a ritual that cements their shared past even as the world around them changes. Heem dies soon after from cancer, and the city begins to face a looming SARS outbreak, signaling an era of upheaval that mirrors the upheavals in their own lives.

Through cycles of hope and loss, the film traces how a single, luminous moment—seeing a UFO on a rooftop—shaped a lifelong friendship and redirected the destinies of four young people. It is a quiet meditation on memory, belief, and the enduring pull of childhood dreams, framed against the backdrop of personal tragedy and societal change. The story invites viewers to consider what it means to pursue a dream when the world around you refuses to stay still, and how friendship can survive, even as time and circumstance pull you in divergent directions.