Cheung King-wai was born in 1968 with ancestral roots in Shenzhen and is a Hong Kong documentary director and screenwriter. Raised in Tsuen Wan, he studied at several local schools and the music department of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts before going to the United States, where he took music, film and philosophy at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College and earned a film degree. His 2001 graduation work, about the handover of Hong Kong, was selected for the Sundance competition, and his screenplay The Apple of God won a merit prize in a Chinese-language screenplay contest. In 2005 his script about Tin Shui Wai won the top prize at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum and was later filmed by Ann Hui as Night and Fog. His 2008 documentary All's Right with the World competed at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and his 2009 film KJ: Music and Life, made over six years and following the growth of a piano prodigy, became the most awarded documentary in Golden Horse history, taking Best Documentary, Best Editing and Best Sound Effects at the 46th Golden Horse Awards and four nominations including Best Film at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards, where he also won Best New Director and received the Hong Kong Arts Development Council's Artist of the Year award. Later works include One Nation, Two Cities (2011), My Voice, My Life (2016) and the feature Somewhere Beyond the Mist (2017), the latter nominated for Best Screenplay at the 37th Hong Kong Film Awards. His films capture their subjects' conditions of life with a calm, rational eye.
With KJ: Music and Life, Cheung King-wai brought local documentary into the view of the Golden Horse and Hong Kong Film Awards; the film broke the awards' convention for documentaries and made him a key figure in Hong Kong non-fiction film, while his later features continue his interest in ordinary lives.
Achievements
- 2005 · His script about Tin Shui Wai won the top prize at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum and was later filmed by Ann Hui as Night and Fog.
- 2009 · KJ: Music and Life won Best Documentary, Best Editing and Best Sound Effects at the 46th Golden Horse Awards.
- 2010 · He won Best New Director at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards for KJ: Music and Life.