Michelle Yeoh Named Busan’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year

LOS ANGELES:
Michelle Yeoh, the star of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Wicked and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has been named Asian Filmmaker of the Year by Busan International Film Festival.

The Malaysia-born actress will be presented with the award at the opening ceremony of BIFF’s 31st edition on October 6 at the Busan Cinema Center in South Korea. The annual award honors an Asian film professional or organisation for exceptional contributions to the advancement of Asian cinema.

It marks the latest accolade for Yeoh, who became the first Asian to win the best actress Oscar, for 2022’s Everything Everywhere All At Once, and was recently the first Asian woman to recieve the Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlinale.

Yeoh returns to BIFF for the first time since attending with The Lady in 2011 with her latest feature, It’s My Time, directed by Bai Xue – her first Chinese-language film in almost a decade. She has also handpicked three of her films to present in a special programme: Reign Of Assassins, Everything Everywhere All At Once and Sean Baker’s recent short Sandiwara.

The actress first visited the festival in 2002 for the Pusan Promotion Plan (now known as the Asian Project Market) and Busan has subsequently screened several of her films including 2007’s Far North and Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy, which closed the 23rd BIFF in 2018.

Her acting career took off in Hong Kong, making a name for herself as an action star in the 1980s and 1990s with films such as Jackie Chan actioner Police Story 3: Supercop (1993), before crossing over to Hollywood with James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).

More recent credits include Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie adaptation A Haunting In Venice (2023), a recurring role in TV series Star Trek: Discovery (2017-2020) and the upcoming fourth and fifth films in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise.

Describing Yeoh as “versatile, commanding and fiercely resolute” and “an unrivalled icon of Asian cinema”, BIFF organisers said the actress had forged a new image of the action heroine while moving seamlesslely between genre films, art-house cinema and musical comedies.

“Her dynamic and memorable characters continue to inspire new generations of actors and filmmakers. Through consistently nuanced performances that defy boundaries of age and convention, her singular body of work proves how an actor can expand the very imaginative horizons of cinema.”

This year’s BIFF runs from October 6-15.