General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Better Days (少年的你) (2019 film)

Better Days (少年的你) is a 2019 Chinese-language youth crime drama directed by the Hong Kong-born director Derek Tsang (曾國祥), starring Zhou Dongyu (周冬雨) as the bullied high school student Chen Nian and Jackson Yee (易烊千璽) as the street hustler Xiao Bei, and adapted from Jiuyue Xi's online novel Young and Beautiful (少年的你，如此美丽)¹. Produced by Jojo Yuet-chun Hui, the film follows two teenagers from opposite ends of Chinese society who protect each other through school bullying, the pressures of the gaokao college entrance examination, and a murder case in which both become suspects¹^•². It earned eight Hong Kong Film Awards and was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards³.

Key fact	Detail
Director / producer	Derek Kwok-cheung Tsang; produced by Jojo Yuet-chun Hui (許月珍), the team behind Soul Mate (2016)¹
Source	Jiuyue Xi's online serial novel Young and Beautiful (少年的你，如此美丽), first serialized on Jinjiang Literature City⁴
Format	135 minutes, color, Putonghua (Mandarin) dialogue, DCP³
Mainland release and box office	25 October 2019; 5亿元 in the first three days; cumulative 1.558 billion yuan, 9th on the 2019 China box-office chart⁵
Censorship hurdles	Withdrawn from the 69th Berlinale in February 2019; domestic release canceled on 24 June 2019, three days before its planned 27 June opening⁶
Top awards	8 wins from 12 nominations at the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards (2020), including Best Film and Best Director⁵
Oscar nomination	Best International Feature Film, 93rd Academy Awards (2021); first Academy Award nomination for a film by a Hong Kong-born director¹

Spoilers

Plot

The film is set in the weeks before the gaokao, the two-day national college entrance exam that determines where, and whether, nearly ten million Chinese students study, and the fates of their families². After witnessing a classmate's suicide, the straight-A student Chen Nian covers the girl's body with her jacket and becomes the next target of the class bully Wei Lai and her friends⁷. Isolated at school and largely on her own at home, she takes refuge with Xiao Bei, a small-time hoodlum abandoned by his family, who agrees to walk behind and protect her¹.

A murder case then entangles both teenagers, who become the prime suspects in the death of a teenage girl². According to the film's registration synopsis filed with the authorities, Chen Nian, unable to endure one final bullying attack, accidentally kills Wei Lai; Xiao Bei decides to confess in her place so she can take the gaokao and go to university, but Chen Nian chooses to surrender herself. In the closing scenes, four years later, a paroled Chen Nian has become an English teacher and resumes her life alongside Xiao Bei⁸. Detective Zheng Yi, played by Yin Fang, acts as the film's mediating adult, pushing Chen Nian toward confession rather than letting Xiao Bei take her punishment⁹.

Production and adaptation

The project reached Tsang through his producer Jojo Yuet-chun Hui, who had also shepherded his first solo feature Soul Mate (2016), a film whose two co-leads shared the Golden Horse Award for Best Actress¹⁰. Tsang said he read the source novel only once and then set it aside; like Soul Mate, the adaptation changed character relationships and plot substantially from the novel¹⁰. Screenplay credit went to Lam Wing-sum, Li Yuan, and Xu Yimeng³.

Casting placed a trained film actress opposite a first-time film lead. Jackson Yee, then a member of the boy band TFBOYS, was 17 during filming and had no formal acting training; Tsang initially thought he was unsuitable for the role of Xiao Bei and later praised his day-by-day improvement on set⁵^•¹¹. Critics singled out the physical, close-up-led performances of both leads; the film's cinematography is credited to Yu Jing-pin¹²^•³. Tsang shot documentary-style detail around the gaokao, drawing on footage from the June 2018 gaokao in Chongqing to build the film's depiction of uniformed students, stacked textbooks, and surveillance¹³.

Censorship and release

The film's route to theaters was unusually interrupted. It was selected for the Generation 14Plus section of the 69th Berlin International Film Festival but withdrew shortly before screening in February 2019, officially citing post-production reasons¹⁴. Its planned Chinese release on 27 June 2019 was canceled on 24 June, with the producers citing "production completeness and market judgment"; Singapore's release was also indefinitely postponed⁶. Trade press attributed the hurdles to the film's brutal depiction of school bullying and its emphasis on gaokao pressure, which coincided with the planned release date¹⁵. One industry source reported the film had never received its public screening permit during this period¹⁴.

On 22 October 2019 the film was suddenly scheduled for release three days later⁶. It opened in mainland China on 25 October, broke 5亿元 in three days, and topped the weekly box office for three consecutive weeks, reaching a cumulative 1.558 billion yuan, 9th among 2019 Chinese films⁵. Overseas dates followed the same season: a limited United States release on 8 November 2019 through Well Go USA, which grossed $1.9 million, and a Hong Kong release on 5 December 2019¹⁶^•¹⁷.

Awards

Hong Kong Film Awards. At the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards, announced online on 6 May 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film won 8 of its 12 nominations: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress for Zhou Dongyu, Best New Performer for Jackson Yee, Best Cinematography, Best Costume and Makeup Design, and Best Original Film Song⁵^•³. It was the first year in the awards' 39-year history without a live ceremony⁵. Zhou Dongyu became the first actress born in the 1990s to hold both the Golden Horse and Hong Kong Film Award Best Actress titles⁵.

Academy Awards. The film was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards as Hong Kong's entry, the first nomination for a film directed by a Hong Kong-born director¹.

Other honors. Zhou Dongyu won Best Actress at the Golden Rooster Awards and the Asian Film Awards, where Jackson Yee won Best Newcomer; the film also took Best Asian Film at the 2020 AACTA Awards, audience awards at the Udine Far East Film Festival and Osaka Asian Film Festival, and three prizes from the 2019 Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild Awards¹⁸^•¹⁹.

Reception

Audience and critical scores in China were high but not uniform. Douban settled at 8.4 after opening-day figures of 8.7, while Maoyan and Taopiaopiao users scored it 9.7 and 9.6²⁰. In a Phoenix-net survey, 95.4 percent of respondents said the film accurately presented the problem of school bullying, though professional critics ranged from 9 to 4; some praised its layered portrayal of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and institutions, while others called it a commercial youth film wearing a social issue as a disguise⁷.

International reception was strongly positive. Rotten Tomatoes recorded 97 percent from 30 reviews; Metacritic scored it 83 from 5 critics, its range calling it "universal acclaim"¹⁶^•²¹. Critics noted Tsang's refusal to soften the bullying scenes and his balance of melodrama with social realism¹⁶. Chinese film scholars credited the film with reopening a youth-genre space for direct treatment of bullying after years of stylized campus romances, and with drawing broad public attention to the issue²².

Adaptation controversy

Soon after release, the source novel was accused of "ronggeng" (融梗, fusing plot elements), an informal term for blending story devices from multiple works, specifically Keigo Higashino's novels Journey Under the Midnight Sun (白夜行) and The Devotion of Suspect X (嫌疑犯X的献身)⁴. The National Copyright Administration's industry commentary observed that some plot elements and character setups resembled Higashino's works, but that whether such similarity constitutes copyright infringement requires case-by-case legal analysis, and that no infringement litigation against the author had followed years of dispute⁴. The commentary also noted that the film had made substantial changes to the novel, further weakening similarities with Higashino's fiction; Tsang said he had never read Journey Under the Midnight Sun⁴^•¹⁰.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026