Tam Wai-ching (born 1984) is a Hong Kong screenwriter and director and one of the few local women to move from literary writing into mainstream commercial cinema. She graduated with first-class honours in film art from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong and began writing while still a student. Before turning to film she wrote fiction under the pen name Blue Sky, publishing short-story collections such as Falling in Love with Loneliness (2005) and several novels; often centred on urban women and on loneliness, love and growing up, her writing shows a sharp feel for language. She then moved into screenwriting, with credits including Benny Chan's The White Storm (2013) and Call of Heroes (2016) and Dante Lam's Operation Mekong (2016), the last adapted from a real case and, as a shared writing credit, nominated for Best Screenplay and other prizes at the 34th Hundred Flowers Awards. In 2017, supported by the second First Feature Film Initiative, she made her directorial debut with Somewhere Beyond the Mist, starring Carina Lau, Ng Siu-hin and Tse Kwan-ho, a literary drama centred on a teacher-student romance and an Oedipal theme that was selected for the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. In 2019 she produced, wrote and directed the television series The Republic. Beyond action and crime films, she has sought to write about character and the social margins, with work spanning both the Hong Kong and mainland markets.
Moving from fiction written under the pen name Blue Sky to screenwriting and then directing, she has bridged literature and film; as a woman working in mainstream action and crime cinema she has carried her eye for urban character into commercial pictures and helped open a path for Hong Kong's female creators.
Achievements
- 2016 · Wrote Operation Mekong, which was nominated for Best Screenplay and other prizes at the 34th Hundred Flowers Awards.
- 2017 · Made her directorial debut with Somewhere Beyond the Mist.
- 2019 · Produced, wrote and directed the television series The Republic.