Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong wins top prize at Taiwan’s Golden Horse film awards
- Wong won the best actor award for playing a Hong Kong taxi driver helping a Pakistani refugee boy in The Sunny Side of the Street
- Five Chinese independent films were also contending but Huang Shuli’s documentary Will you Look at Me was the only work from the mainland that bagged a prize
Veteran Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong took top honours at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards Saturday while a Chinese short film won for the first time since Beijing shunned the event because of political tensions.
Dubbed the Chinese-language Oscars, the Golden Horse awards took place for the fourth straight year without most of the Chinese and Hong Kong A-listers who used to walk the red carpet in Taipei.
Beijing officially boycotted the event in 2019 after a Taiwanese director advocated for the island’s independence in an acceptance speech the year before.
Mainland China claims self-ruled democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and has long blacklisted its entertainers over any perceived support for independence.
Wong was reportedly declared persona non grata by Chinese authorities for backing Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement and being a supporter of the city’s independence, which he denied.
He won the award for best actor – his first prize on his third nomination – for playing a Hong Kong taxi driver helping a Pakistani refugee boy in The Sunny Side of the Street.
“I think new directors bring me luck and I should only work with new directors for my future films,” Wong joked at the ceremony as the crowd erupted into laughter.
He was referring to Malaysia’s Lau Kok-rui, who won the awards for best new director and best original screenplay.
