Veteran mainland Chinese language director Zhang Yimou is to be honored twice over on the Asian Movie Awards ceremony on Sunday. He shall be offered with a lifetime achievement award and a separate prize for steering the highest-grossing Asian movie of 2023.

“These two awards are usually not solely a testomony to Zhang’s extraordinary achievements, but in addition to his continued success, having gained the Asian movie contribution award on the 4th AFAs in 2010 and one of the best director award on the fifteenth Asian Movie Awards in 2021 for ‘One Second’,” AFA organizers stated.

“I take into account myself very lucky to have chosen filmmaking as my lifelong career. Having been within the business for over 4 many years, I’m grateful to everybody who appreciates my movies [..] I’ll continue to learn and attempt to surpass myself. All the time having anticipations for the longer term, I hope that my finest movie shall be my subsequent one,” stated Zhang in a ready assertion.

Set in the course of the Southern Music Dynasty, and adopting a tone someplace between thriller and comedy, “Full River Purple” recounts how two troopers are embroiled in a conspiracy after they’re tasked with uncovering the assassin of a messenger from a rival dynasty. It launched in January final 12 months and headed the Lunar New 12 months field workplace in China earlier than being launched in different territories together with Hong Kong, the U.Ok., North America, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. Ticketing company Maoyan experiences that its combination worldwide gross was $667 million, making it the main Asian movie final 12 months and the eighth worldwide.

Zhang just lately acquired lifetime honors on the Tokyo Worldwide Movie Pageant (which is a co-organizer of the AFAs) and a field workplace achievement award at CineAsia in December.

Talking in Tokyo, Zhang stated that within the latter a part of his profession, he intends to eschew performing, screenwriting or manufacturing and to focus solely on directing – on the fee of 1 movie per 12 months, till he’s now not ready. In reality, since “Full River Purple,” two extra Zhang movies have been launched: Shanghai-set “Below the Gentle” and authorized comedy-drama “Article 20.” The latter was launched final month and topped the mainland China field workplace chart in its third week. Its gross to this point stands at $320 million.

Having began as a cinematographer, Zhang made his directorial debut with “Purple Sorghum,” a robust story set in a sorghum distillery in the course of the second Sino-Japanese Battle, which gained the Golden Bear on the Berlin movie competition.

His movies from 1988 to 1999 largely centered on rural lives and included “Ju Dou,” “Elevate the Purple Lantern,” “The Story of Qiu Ju,” “To Dwell,” “Not One Much less,” and “The Highway House.”

With the start of the industrialization of the Chinese language movie business in 2000, Zhang turned to big-screen tentpoles and made “Hero,” “Home of Flying Daggers” and “Curse of the Golden Flower.”

Since then, his output has assorted nonetheless additional together with intimate drama “Below the Hawthorne Tree, English-language actioner “The Nice Wall,” Cultural Revolution drama “One Second” and espionage thriller “Cliff Walkers.”

The Asian Movie Awards shall be held on Sunday on the Xiqu Centre in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District.