Zhang Yimou. Photo: Asia Film Awards Academy

 
Chinese veteran director Zhang Yimou has received the highest honor of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District on Sunday and expressed his gratitude and wish to tell more Asian stories to the world through film.
 
"Asian films are playing an important role in the current world, and many Asian film-makers are chasing their dreams…I hope this award is not the end, but a starting point for us to chase our dreams and continue to work hard to tell our Asian stories to the world," he said during the ceremony.
 
He also earned the award for the 2023 Highest-grossing Asian Film Award with his film Full River Red.
 
Zhang, 73, has directed a total of 28 movies with a cumulative box office of more than 14 billion yuan, according to Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan. He was also the director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, showcasing China's technological advances and unique aesthetics to the world, and is honored by Chinese netizens as "one of the most influential directors in China. "
 
Another highlight of the film award was the honor bestowed upon late Tibetan director Pema Tseden whose film Snow Leopard won the Best Screenplay (Pema Tseden) and Best Cinematography (Matthias Delvaux).
 
Pema Tseden was the first Tibetan director to reflect the lives of the Tibetan people in Tibetan language, and a stalwart of China's contemporary ethnic minority literature. In the early morning hours of May 8, 2023, Pema Tseden passed away in Xizang Autonomous Region at the age of 53 due to a sudden medical emergency.
 
The movie Snow Leopard is the eighth movie by Pema Tseden that uses the Tibetan language. The movie originated from an epiphany the director had while in Northwest China's Qinghai Province in 2020. It tells the story of how man and nature, and animals can get along with each other, and it is the last gift left to the world by the director.
 

Pema Tseden. Photo: Courtesy of Douban

Pema Tseden's son, the executive director of the movie Snow Leopard Jigme Trinley said that Snow Leopard is a new breakthrough in the sequence of Pema Tseden's movies, and the audience can feel the hope of love in the cold tone, as well as director's new understanding of life, the world, and the Tibetan culture.
 
Snow Leopard once won the Toyko Grand Prix (Best Film Award) at the 36th Tokyo International Film Festival.

The media reported a total of 35 films from 24 countries and regions having been shortlisted for 16 awards at the Asian Film Awards.

The Asian Film Awards was founded in 2007 as the first Asian film award organized by the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and since 2014, it has been hosted by the Asian Film Awards Academy, a joint venture of the three major international film festivals of Hong Kong, Pusan and Tokyo, with the aim of showcasing outstanding Asian cinematic works to the international community.