When Hui returned to Hong Kong after her stay in London, she became an assistant to prominent Chinese film director King Hu.

She then began working for Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) as a scriptwriter-director and produced documentaries such as Wonderful, four episodes of CID, two of Social Worker, and one of the Dragon, Tiger, Panther series.

In March 1977 she directed six dramas for the Independent Commission Against Corruption,[7] a Hong Kong organization created to clean up government misconduct.

[8] In 1979, Hui finally directed her first feature-length film, The Secret, which presents images from the gloomy and dreary old Western District, with its worn-out mansions, shadowy alleys, fallen leaves and religious rituals, such as the ceremonial rite of releasing the soul from purgatory by burning paper money and cutting off the head of a chicken.

During this "New Wave" period, most of her films are sharp and tough, with satirical and political metaphors, reflecting her concern for people; for women; for orphans devastated by war; and for Vietnamese refugees.

[10] It depicts the story of a young woman, Cheung Hueyin, returning to Hong Kong for her sister's wedding after studying film in London for several years.

"Its narratives of migration also spoke to the displacement of the Hong Kong people as they left the colony in panic to escape the impending Chinese rule.

Hui is known for making controversial films; the interview, in particular, described the horrors of increased crime and unemployment rates in Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong.

The other filmmakers were Sammo Hung, Ringo Lam, Patrick Tam Kar-Ming, Tsui Hark, Yuen Woo-ping and Johnnie To.

They are about the tragic destinies of displaced individuals seeking a place to which they can belong and who are struggling in a period of changes, leading in the end to failure.

"[14] This film is historical: in the late 1970s, a large number of Vietnamese boat people illegally immigrated to Hong Kong.

This film describes the experience of those who risked their lives in Hong Kong, and shows the setbacks, discrimination and exploitation they experienced when they were only teens.

This film describes the hardship of smuggling, the memories of war, the sinister nature of refugee camps, and the crisis in Chinatown.

Hui experimented with special effects and daring angles; her preoccupation with sensitive political and social issues is a recurrent feature in most of her subsequent films.

Hui's Ordinary Heroes (1999), about Chinese and Hong Kong political activists from 1970s to the 1990s, won the Best Feature at the Golden Horse Awards.

In 2002, her July Rhapsody, the companion film to Summer Snow about a middle-aged male teacher facing a mid-life crisis, was released to good reviews in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Her film, Jade Goddess of Mercy (2003), starring Zhao Wei and Nicholas Tse, was adapted from a novel from Chinese writer Hai Yan.

"Both the director and I wanted the film to come out, so we calculated the cost and used it to produce, what I lost was just my salary, just count it as finding someone to play with me for two months.

Mark Jenkins writes, "Fictionalized from actual events, the sumptuously photographed drama centers on Lan (Zhou Xun), a teacher before the Japanese closed the local schools.

After she helps smuggle out a noted author (Guo Tao), the young woman is recruited by the insurgents' swashbuckling leader (Eddie Peng).

Lan eventually learns that her ex (Wallace Huo Chienhwa) has infiltrated the occupation headquarters, where he discusses classical Chinese verse with a Japanese officer (Masatoshi Nagase, who also portrayed another poetry lover in 'Paterson').

Most of her films show daily life of women in Hong Kong and create vivid female images through delicate artistic expression.

[25] As one of the leading figures of Hong Kong's New Wave, Hui has continuously challenged herself and broadened her film career while bringing the audience surprises.

Audrey Yue writes, "When it was released in 1990, the film's themes of cross-cultural alienation, inter-ethnic marriage, generational reconciliation and divided loyalties resonated with the British colony's 1997 transition to Chinese sovereignty.

Firstly, she creates submissive women, for example, with Sum Ching in The Story of Woo Viet (1982), Cam Nuong in Boat People (1982), Mang Tit Lan in Zodiac Killers (1991), and Ling in Night and Fog (2009).

However, Hui also creates female characters with strong sense of rebellion, such as Bai Liu-Su in Love in a Fallen City (1984), May Sun in Summer Snow (1995), Gu Manzhen in Eighteen Springs (1997), and Xiao Hong in The Golden Era (2014).

[28] She also revealed her attitudes on her intention of constructing the stories by reflecting the conditions in social reality: Filmmakers usually use their eyes to tell a story very subjectively, mixing in a lot of what they think the situation is and how they react to it, but maybe I should set up the problems in this particular situation clearly and show the dilemma rather than adding my solution and qualifying that objective thing with many personal intrusions.

[29] In an interview with Esther M. K. Cheung, Hui revealed: I distinctly prefer making realist films with a modern-day setting.

In Hui's features, voice-over functions not solely to (1) narrate the plot and (2) bring to the surface the interior thoughts and feelings of the characters, but also (3) to catalyze the connection between shots.

In most cases, voice-over is employed to give oral expression to the interior thoughts and feelings of the characters"[7] The 2021 documentary film Keep Rolling provides an insight into her life's work.