Ming Liang Tsai has had four feature films showcased at the Cannes Film Festival, with 2001’s What Time Is It There? winning the Technical Grand Prize for sound design. A champion of slow cinema, the director highlights the quality of stillness, focusing on everyday moments and the meaning of time in his films. His Cannes-winning work, for example, explores the connection between a street vendor in Taiwan who sells a watch to a woman bound for Paris. 

Meanwhile, his short film Where Do You Stand, Tsai Ming-Liang?, which was included in the May 2023 experimental film festival Prismatic Ground, is a meditation on pandemic isolation as told by his cat and static shots of chairs in empty houses. Earlier, in November 2022, the director also presented A Quest at the Centre Pompidou Museum in Paris. The exhibition featured, among other works, the film Where, another exploration of slowness featuring his favourite actor Lee Kang-Sheng. Where was also screened at the 2023 Hong Kong Film Festival. 

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“Films are about feng shui, which is like how you go into a restaurant and you sit in a certain spot because that feels good to you. I feel so comfortable making films in Hong Kong, because there are so many interesting spaces with special atmosphere, quality, light, colours or textures…,” said Christopher Doyle to Tatler. “To me, the script is the point of departure; the real process is placing people in the right space for what is happening, so that what happens goes further than what is written.”

Doyle’s singular approach to filmmaking has made him one of the most influential cinematographers in the world. The creative, who moved to Hong Kong in the ’70s, has helped shape over 100 films, including seven of auteur Wong Kar Wai’s movies such as In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express and Happy Together. For his contribution to filmmaking, he was awarded the Technical Grand Prize for In the Mood for Love in 2000 and the Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens in Cinematography in 2017 at the Cannes Film Festival. Doyle has also won the Osella d’Oro for Best Cinematography for Ashes of Time (another Wong Kar Wai collaboration) at the Venice International Film Festival. 

Also a director, Doyle has released four feature films and is working on his next directorial project, Immunodeficiency, with Tilda Swinton. 

Read Christopher Doyle’s full profile on Asia’s Most Influential

In 2013, Anthony Chen’s debut film Ilo Ilo premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Caméra d'Or. The director and producer followed up the triumph with projects under Giraffe Pictures, the film company he co-founded as an international label for emerging Asian filmmakers. Under the outfit, Chen produced Distance, which opened the 2015 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, and directed Wet Season, which won several awards at international film festivals. Giraffe’s slate of films embraces stories across the region: Ajooma from South Korea, Some Nights I Feel Like Walking from the Philippines, This City Is A Battlefield from Indonesia and Arnold Is A Model Student from Thailand.

While on lockdown, the filmmaker remotely shot The Break Away from the basement of his London home. The short was part of the seven-segment movie The Year of the Everlasting Storm, which debuted at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. More recently, Chen’s English-language debut Drift, which stars Academy Award-nominee Cynthia Erivo, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

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In 2008, Brilliante Mendoza was thrust into the spotlight at the Cannes Film Festival, with his film Service nominated for the Palme d'Or and himself tipped for Best Director. A year later, the Filipino filmmaker would win Best Director for Kinatay and in 2016, he would once again showcase his work at the festival, bagging a Palme d’Or nomination for Ma’ Rosa.

The director, producer and screenwriter has also received praise at the Venice, Berlin and Busan International Film Festivals, with his 2021 movie Gensan Punch winning the Kim Jiseok Award at Busan. Recently, Mendoza has been expanding his portfolio, dipping into the world of streaming as a producer for Filipino outfit Vivamax. In 2022, the director received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 19th Asian Film Festival in Rome.

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A champion of Taiwanese cinema, Hsiao-hsien Hou is known for films imbued with thoughtful pacing and wordless scenes. At the Cannes Film Festival, his film The Puppetmaster won the Jury Prize in 1993 while The Assassin won him the Best Director in 2015. Several of the master’s movies have also been shown at the festival, including Flight of the Red Balloon, which was the opener for the Un Certain Regard selection in 2007.

In 2022, fans of the director received good news about his long-gestating project Shulan River. According to The Film Stage, Hou was scheduled to begin scouting locations for the movie, which is an adaptation of a Hsieh Hai-meng novel. Outside of his acclaimed works, Hou supports local filmmaking as chairman of the Taipei Film Festival; he is also a committee member of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.

Read Hsiao-hsien Hou’s full profile on Asia’s Most Influential

Tatler Asia's Most Influential is the definitive list of people shaping our world today. Asia's Most Influential brings together the region's most innovative changemakers, industry titans and thought leaders who are driving positive impact in Asia and beyond. View the full list here.

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