Tony Leung Chiu-wai has been tapped to preside over the main competition jury at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival, kicking off on June 12.
Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished actors in Chinese-language cinema, Leung has built a more than 40-year career across upwards of 100 screen credits, working repeatedly with many of the region’s most beloved auteurs — names like Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, John Woo, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tran Anh Hung. He is also a festival regular, most recently serving as president of the main competition jury at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2024 — three years after becoming the first Chinese actor to receive the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.
“Cinema is the art of dreaming, and Shanghai is the very vessel on which the Chinese film dream set sail,” Leung said in a video message shared upon his acceptance of the invitation. He also extended his warm greetings and an invitation to filmmakers and audiences worldwide, adding, “I still have a few tickets left. Will you come with me?”
Leung entered the industry in 1982 and made his screen debut the following year, rising through Hong Kong’s TVB before becoming a fixture of the territory’s second wave and post-handover cinema. His filmography reads as a thoroughgoing overview of Chinese-language auteurist cinema over the last four decades — including seven collaborations with Wong, among them Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046 and The Grandmaster; Zhang’s wuxia landmark Hero; Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution; Woo’s Hard Boiled and Red Cliff; and Hou’s A City of Sadness and Flowers of Shanghai. Beyond Chinese-language cinema, he starred in Tran’s Cyclo and recently worked with Hungarian Oscar winner Ildikó Enyedi.
A sampling of his most celebrated performances must include the quietly devastated Chow Mo-wan in In the Mood for Love — for which he won the best actor prize at Cannes in 2000, the first actor from Hong Kong to do so — the conflicted swordsman Broken Sword in Hero, and the wisecracking Ouyang Feng in Jeffrey Lau’s cult comedy The Eagle Shooting Heroes, among so many others. He has also appeared in three films that took home Venice’s Golden Lion for best film: A City of Sadness (1989), Cyclo (1995) and Lust, Caution (2007).
Founded in 1993, the Shanghai International Film Festival is China’s most established cinema event. Previous jury presidents include Danny Boyle, Luc Besson, Barry Levinson, Tom Hooper, John Woo, Jiang Wen, Tran Anh Hung and Jean-Jacques Annaud.
Further jury announcements and the festival lineup are expected from SIFF later this spring.