Wong Kar Wai

Love, sex, betrayal and repression: these are the preferred themes of cult director Wong Kar-Wai. In a style inherited from both Chinese sabre cinema, Hong Kong action films and Western cinema, his romantic urban dramas play out subtle love affairs, urban solitude and disenchantment. Thus, Fallen Angels (1995) tells the story of a professional killer searching for lost love, in Hong Kong’s sordid criminal underworld. His films are chaotic and sensual with a refined aesthetic, and are made up of elliptical intrigues. He became known to a wide audience with the release of In the Mood for Love (2000), but had nonetheless previously made a name for himself in the film world with his first feature film, As Tears Go By, in 1988, then with Chungking Express (1994), with its highly original aesthetic.

Born in 1958 in Shanghai, Wong Kar-Wai immigrated to Hong Kong at the age of five. He was separated from his father for ten years, who remained in China under the Cultural Revolution. This exile perhaps explains the importance of the themes of separation and wandering in his films. After studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, he worked for Hong Kong television as a production assistant, then as a scriptwriter from 1980 to 1988, at which point he devoted himself to cinema. He has been nominated nearly thirty times in various international festivals and has received many prizes, including the Best Director Award for Happy Together at the Cannes Festival in 1997, and the César for Best Foreign Film, in 2001, for In the Mood for Love.