Devoted partners Pat and Angie have shared a life, a love, and their cozy Hong Kong apartment for decades. Hosting boisterous family meals (where they are simply referred to as “aunties,” even if privately everyone knows they are a couple), looking after each other’s needs, and enjoying their community of Hong Kong queers, they seem to exemplify a life of contentment as aging lesbians in an ever more accepting society. 

But that happiness starts to unravel in the face of a family tragedy. As the writer/director Ray Yeung showed in his earlier, equally sensitive portrait of two aging gay men in Hong Kong (Twilight's Kiss, Frameline43), the biases facing older queer couples surface both subtly and overtly, as Angie must navigate the long-suppressed attitudes of Pat’s family and the inequity of Hong Kong’s laws. Like Angie herself, All Shall Be Well — which won this year’s Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival — manages to be both delicate and tough, a moving depiction of the true meaning of chosen family.