Filmmaker Wong Kar-wai becomes first Hong Kong director to win Lumière Award
Director of films such as Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love becomes first Hong Kong filmmaker to win ‘Nobel Prize for cinema’
Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, director of Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, has been honoured with a prestigious award at a major film festival in Lyon, France.
Wong became the first local director to win the Lumière Award – often described as the “Nobel Prize for cinema” – joining a list of high-profile filmmakers including Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
The prize was given to Wong on Friday evening for “his unclassifiable films, each with countless flares of beauty; for the trace he is leaving upon cinema history; for all that is glorious and lingering in his work; for the neon lights of Hong Kong and the snows of Manchuria; and because, after all, dark glasses are undeniably classy,” the festival said, referring to the director’s usual look.
American film director and actor Clint Eastwood, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar and French actress Catherine Deneuve were among those previously distinguished by the prize originally created to celebrate a filmmaker or personality of the cinema in Lyon, where the cinematograph was invented by the Lumière brothers.
Wong paid tribute to his wife on receiving the award.
