Ann Hui, the Hong Kong New Wave pioneer whose films have chronicled the lives of her city’s ordinary and overlooked for nearly half a century, will receive the 2026 Camellia Award at the Busan International Film Festival, presented in partnership with Chanel.
The 79-year-old director will accept the prize — awarded to filmmakers who have advanced the standing of women in the industry — at the festival’s opening ceremony on Oct. 6 at the Busan Cinema Center.
“In my previous years I felt unwilling to receive such taking-stock prizes because I wished to continue making movies,” Hui said in a statement. “Now that I’m nearly eighty and find it difficult to make a film, I think the prize comes just in time for me to appreciate it more.”
Since her 1979 debut The Secret, Hui has directed 27 features and two feature-length documentaries. Her work helped define the Hong Kong New Wave, with films that move across genres but return to her perennial theme — the struggles of everyday life at the margins, portrayed without sentiment: Vietnamese refugees in Boat People (1982), a daughter’s reckoning with her Japanese mother in Song of the Exile (1990), the small dignities of working-class life in The Way We Are (2008), an aging servant and the family she raised in A Simple Life (2011).
Hui is already one of the most decorated directors of her generation. She has won best director at the Hong Kong Film Awards six times, more than any filmmaker in the ceremony’s history, and three times at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards. Twice — with Summer Snow in 1995 and A Simple Life in 2011 — her work swept best film, director, actor and actress at the Hong Kong awards. In 2020, she became the first female director to receive Venice’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, sharing that year’s honor with Tilda Swinton. She was previously honored in Busan in 2014 as the Asian Filmmaker of the Year.
Established in 2024, the Camellia Award takes its name from a flower that is both Busan’s civic emblem and, famously, Gabrielle Chanel’s favorite. Korean production designer Ryu Seong-hie (Oldboy, Decision to Leave) was its inaugural recipient, followed last year by Taiwanese actress and filmmaker Sylvia Chang.
“I am so happy to return to Busan,” Hui added, “and meet an audience that is among the most savvy and cinematically literate in the world.”
Hui will be honored alongside Michelle Yeoh, this year’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year, at a ceremony hosted by Pachinko star Kim Minha. The 31st Busan International Film Festival runs Oct. 6-15.
