Nansun Shi

Few people had a bigger impact on Hong Kong’s film scene than Nansun Shi. The movie producer was the co-founder of Film Workshop, which was behind a series of bona fide classics, including A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989) and Once Upon a Time in China (1991). She started her career in television in the mid-1970s, then moved into cinema in 1981 with production company Cinema City, which broke the Shaw Brothers-Golden Harvest duopoly on filmmaking in the city.

Shi started Film Workshop in 1984, where she was a pioneer in numerous ways: the first to sell Hong Kong films to the international market, the first to shoot in mainland China, and the first to share revenue between Hong Kong-mainland China co-productions, with 1993’s Once Upon A Time In China III. She also worked at the giant Media Asia Group, where she was involved with the epoch-making Infernal Affairs (2003), and she had been co-head of international sales agency Distribution Workshop since 2007. A member of the jury for the main competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, she was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2013.