Ten Years presents a chillingly prescient vision of Hong Kong in the year 2025, framed as a collection of five vignettes exploring the city's total absorption into the political and cultural framework of mainland China. The film depicts a territory where the "One Country, Two Systems" principle has effectively collapsed, replaced by a panoptic surveillance state that monitors everything from speech in taxi cabs to the specific vocabulary used in grocery stores.

Societally, the film focuses on the forced Sinicization of Hong Kong, where the Cantonese language is marginalized in favor of Mandarin and local history is systematically archived or destroyed. The dynamic is one of generational conflict and ideological indoctrination, most notably through the "Youth Guard," a Red Guard-style organization of children trained to report on subversive behavior. The world is defined by a profound sense of anxiety and the "soft resistance" of citizens trying to maintain their identity in an increasingly hostile environment.

Many of the film's predictions have transitioned from speculative fiction to reality with startling accuracy. The short film Extras imagined the orchestration of a staged attack to justify a National Security Law, a legislative move that actually occurred in 2020, five years ahead of the film's timeline. While the film’s depiction of Mandarin-only policies for taxi drivers has not been fully realized by 2026, the diminishing role of Cantonese in education and public life remains a core point of societal friction. The film’s portrayal of retail censorship (labeling "local" eggs as subversive) mirrors real-world crackdowns on businesses displaying pro-democracy symbols during and after the 2019 protests.