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WONG
KAR-WAI

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Wong Kar-Wai

Wong Kar-Wai, (born July 17, 1958, Shanghai, China), is a Chinese film director noted for his atmospheric films about memory, longing, and the passage of time.

Wong’s family emigrated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1963. For many Shanghainese, assimilation of Hong Kong’s different dialect and culture was difficult. Wong’s early experiences left a lasting impression, and three of his feature films are set in the 1960s.

Wong began his career as a screenwriter, first earning a co-writing credit for the romantic drama "Once Upon a Rainbow" (1982). His first film as a director was "As Tears Go By" (1987) an atmospheric gangster movie that succeeded at the Hong Kong box office.

Topping many best director lists, Wong is notorious for his unconventional approach to filmmaking which means long production periods and unfinished scripts, with actors often having to work off of just a couple of pages of script and reshooting takes multiple times.

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As Tears Go By (1988)

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Wong Kar Wai’s scintillating debut feature is a kinetic, hypercool crime thriller graced with flashes of the impressionistic, daydream visual style for which he would become renowned. Set amid Hong Kong’s ruthless, neon-lit gangland underworld, this operatic saga of ambition, honor, and revenge stars Andy Lau Tak Wah as a small-time mob enforcer who finds himself torn between a burgeoning romance with his ailing cousin (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, in the first of her iconic collaborations with the director) and his loyalty to his loose-cannon partner in crime (Jacky Cheung Hok Yau), whose reckless attempts to make a name for himself unleash a spiral of violence.

As Tears Go By Movie Trailer
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