There had to be so much whirling around in Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s mind as the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) was drawing to a close.
Important decisions were pending in his role as the jury head for the event’s main Golden Goblet competition, and there was a masterclass full of hungry young minds, ready to hang on his every word, scheduled for that very afternoon.
Then there was the effect of the constant and inescapable noise being generated in and around the festival all week long about factors affecting the very future of the film industry — chief among them the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and falling global box-office returns.
But what the Hong Kong star does when he sits down to chat is exactly what he’s been doing across a career that now spans over four decades. Leung delivers.
First, and unprompted, Leung sound-checks the recording equipment for the video crew who’ve joined us to make sure everything is running smoothly, and then he eases back into a conversation that covers all those issues, and more.
