Hark Tsui

Tsui Hark just snagged a spot as the fourth Chinese director to sit on the board of judges for the 57th Cannes Film Festival in the feature films game. That’s a pretty wild ride for a guy who started messing around with 8mm film as a teenager—seriously, he was barely a teen and already making movies. After getting his film degree from the University of Texas at Austin (yep, he went all the way to Texas), he bounced back to Hong Kong in ’77 and jumped into television work. Two years later, he dropped his directorial debut, Dip bin. People lost their minds—it was like a lightning bolt that kicked off a whole new wave in Hong Kong cinema. From there, Tsui just kept cranking out hit after hit, both critically and at the box office. In ’84, he and his wife, Nansun Shi, put their chips on the table and launched Film Workshop. They wanted it to be a modern gig, but it wound up being one of the most legendary production houses in Hong Kong. Just look at the classics that rolled out: stuff like A Chinese Ghost Story and A Better Tomorrow (the John Woo/Chow Yun-Fat combo is still legendary). Tsui basically redefined kung-fu movies—he’s the guy behind Once Upon a Time in China and all those wild wuxia flicks from the early '90s. His style? Totally game-changing. He took the genre and flipped it, setting a new bar that filmmakers are still chasing.