Steve Yuen Kim Wai was born on 8 July 1966 in Kowloon Walled City in British Hong Kong to a family from Jieyang, Guangdong; his father worked there as an unlicensed dentist and he had three older siblings. He played as a boy by the Kai Tak nullah near Mei Tung Estate and moved at thirteen to Broadcast Drive in Kowloon Tong. Educated at Munsang College and later Li Ma Dou College, he often skipped pre-university classes to watch films in cinemas, which turned him towards film-making; after secondary school he hoped to become a basketball player but was not picked for the Hong Kong squad, and in 1986 he went to Carleton University in Canada to study psychology. Returning to Hong Kong in 1990, he joined Television Broadcasts after delivering takeaway food to its studios, began as an assistant director in the variety department's music unit on Jade Solid Gold, and in 1992 was promoted to director, his first project being the Jade Singers Anniversary; before leaving the station he directed more than a hundred music videos. In 1995 he moved to a production house to shoot music videos and then became a commercials director, making advertisements for SmarTone, Hutchison Telecom and Motorola, while self-publishing the basketball magazine Fliers for about nine months until falling readership closed it. In 2006 he took a master's in film-making at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating in 2008. Invited in 2011 by the playwright Chong Mui-ngam to see her award-winning stage play, he decided to adapt it for the screen; shot from 2014, it was released in 2016 as Heaven in the Dark, starring Jacky Cheung and Karena Lam, and took about HK$3.21 million in Hong Kong. In 2020 he wrote and directed Declared Legally Dead, adapted from Yusuke Kishi's novel, with Anthony Wong and Karena Lam, grossing about HK$7.78 million. In 2022 the basketball-loving Yuen directed the ViuTV drama We Got Game, starring Keung To. He had worked early on with the television colleague Wong Wai-kwan, later MIRROR's manager, and has advised on music videos for the group's members. Married twice, his second wife was the actress Karena Lam; they wed in Canada in 2010, had two daughters, and announced their divorce in 2023.
Moving from television and commercials into film, Yuen takes family, crime and psychology as his subjects; Heaven in the Dark and Declared Legally Dead, both starring Karena Lam, marry a stage-like intensity with suspense, and his 2022 series We Got Game brought basketball to local drama.
Achievements
- 1992 · Promoted to director at Television Broadcasts, making more than a hundred music videos before leaving the station
- 2016 · Wrote and directed his first feature, Heaven in the Dark, starring Jacky Cheung and Karena Lam
- 2022 · Directed the basketball drama We Got Game for ViuTV, starring Keung To