Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996)

The essential pick for anyone who has only seen the Hollywood epics. Peter Chan follows two migrants from mainland China, played by Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung, who meet in Hong Kong, become friends, fall for each other and keep missing their moment as work, money and other commitments pull them apart, all the way to New York. Its title comes from a Teresa Teng song, and her music threads through the film as the thing that connects them across years and cities. Cheung's performance, by turns brash and heartbroken, won her Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards, where the film also took Best Picture and Best Director. It is smaller in scale than most entries here and hits just as hard.