Alan Mak Siu-fai was born in Hong Kong on 1 January 1965 and graduated from the drama school of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. A director and screenwriter, he entered the industry in the 1990s as an assistant director; he acted in Johnnie To's Loving You (1995) and directed his first feature in 1998, Chasing the Murderer for Twenty Years, starring Francis Ng. In 2002 he co-directed and co-wrote Infernal Affairs with Andrew Lau and Felix Chong; its twin-undercover structure stunned audiences, took more than HK$55 million at the Hong Kong box office to top the year's chart, and won Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 22nd Hong Kong Film Awards, while also winning Best Feature Film and Best Director at the 40th Golden Horse Awards. The trilogy was later remade in Hollywood as Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006), starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2003 he made Infernal Affairs II and III, the three films together taking over HK$110 million in Hong Kong; in 2005 he co-directed the manga-based racing film Initial D and in 2006 City of Glass. With Felix Chong he shared writing duties while taking the director's chair. From 2009 they made the Overheard series on financial crime and surveillance, and in 2010 Mak won Best Director from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society for the first instalment, while in 2015 their third film won Best Screenplay at the 34th Hong Kong Film Awards. He went on to direct Extraordinary Mission and Integrity.
Mak and Felix Chong formed a long-running writing-directing partnership; Infernal Affairs gave Hong Kong crime cinema its twin-undercover motif and carried the series to an international audience, while the Overheard films brought financial crime into the genre.
Achievements
- 2003 · Won Best Director (with Andrew Lau) and Best Screenplay (with Felix Chong) at the 22nd Hong Kong Film Awards for Infernal Affairs
- 2003 · Won Best Feature Film and Best Director at the 40th Golden Horse Awards for Infernal Affairs
- 2010 · Won Best Director from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society for Overheard
- 2015 · Won Best Screenplay at the 34th Hong Kong Film Awards for Overheard 3