Shang-Chi fame Tony Leung Named Jury President at Tokyo Film Festival

Tony Leung, a Hong Kong acting star, will serve as the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival’s International Competition jury.

After giving a masterclass at the previous year’s festival, Leung, who is well-known globally for collaborations with Wong Kar-wai on films like “In the Mood for Love,” “Chungking Express,” “Happy Together,” and “2046,” as well as for movies like “Lust, Caution,” “Infernal Affairs” series, and Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” is returning.

The actor, one of Asia’s finest actors, has received several awards in his storied career, including the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for “In the Mood for Love” and the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Leung, 61, stated that he is “immensely honoured” to be on the jury at TIFF as he grew up watching classic Japanese movies in Hong Kong and they “were the start of a great love affair between Japanese film, people and its culture”.

“I’m already expecting the festival to be full of surprises and a lot of fun to preside over, I’m sure. What I hope is that it will be a bit of an adventure, with an audacious line up of quality films. I just, ‘feel’, when it comes to judging, trusting fellow jurors’ feelings as well as my own will make a positive contribution to the selection process,” he stated in a statement posted on the festival’s official website.