The legendary Hong Kong actor, who will be taking home the Golden Lion
for Lifetime Achievement award at Venice this year, is the star of crime thriller
Where the Wind Blows and compelling spy story Hidden Blade.
Apart from being masterpieces, what do almost all of Wong Kar Wai’s films have in common? And apart from being cult favourites, what do John Woo’s Bullet in the Head and Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs have in common? We could go on all day, but the answer is staring us in the face: what they have in common is one of the greatest Hong Kong actors ever: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai!
Beloved in both East and West, Best Actor award-winner in Cannes in 2000 for In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai is back!) and all set to receive the well-deserved Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award in Venice next September, mister Leung has recently added two fantastic new titles to his monumental filmography: Where the Wind Blows and Hidden Blade. Two movies that the Far East Film Festival 25 – eagerly awaited in Udine from the 21st to the 29th of April – will be presenting to the public for (respectively) their Italian and their International Festival premiere.
Directed by Philip Yung, Where the Wind Blows is a sumptuous historical crime thriller set during the colonial era: a trip through the history of Hong Kong with echoes of Coppola, Leone and Wong Kar Wai. At the centre of the story is a small group of policemen (“The Four Great Sergeants”) who on the one hand fight crime while on the other building an empire through corruption.
Hidden Blade, directed by Cheng Er, is instead a gripping spy story set during the Japanese occupation of China in World War II. At the heart of the story is the activity of a special section of the Shanghai Communist Party that infiltrates the puppet Chinese government and the Japanese counterintelligence agencies. Through a web of complicated and extremely dangerous initiatives, the revolutionaries manage to recruit allies from the ranks of the enemy…
Don’t be caught unprepared: start revising Tony Leung Chiu-Wai’s striking career before the celebrations in Venice, beginning from the screenings of Where the Wind Blows and Hidden Blade in Udine!
