The 28th Shanghai International Film Festival has tapped revered actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai to head the jury for its main competition Golden Goblet Awards.
The festival opens June 12 and runs through June 21.
Leung has been a fixture of Chinese-language cinema for more than four decades, amassing upward of 100 screen credits and working with some of the most distinguished directors in world cinema, among them Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, John Woo, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tran Anh Hung and Ildikó Enyedi. He got his start in the business in 1982 and appeared on screen for the first time the following year.
“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 released alongside the announcement.
Among his most celebrated performances are the wisecracking Ouyang Feng in Jeffrey Lau’s comedy “The Eagle Shooting Heroes,” the quietly devastated Chow Mo-wan in Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” and the conflicted warrior Broken Sword in Zhang Yimou’s “Hero.” Across wildly different registers and genres, Leung has consistently brought a quality of deep, controlled interiority to his characters that has resonated with audiences and sparked critical conversation well beyond the Chinese-speaking world.
Three years ago, at the 80th Venice International Film Festival – marking four decades since his screen debut – he became the first Chinese actor to receive the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. In a tribute marking the occasion, Ang Lee praised him as the kind of performer every director hopes to work with, one who holds nothing back and raises the level of everyone around him.
The Golden Goblet Awards are among Asia’s most prestigious film prizes. Shanghai, where Chinese cinema first took root, hosts the festival annually as part of its identity as a UNESCO City of Film.
