In the Mood for Love - New Restoration!/ 화양연화
2000, Hong Kong, 98m
Cantonese and Shanghainese with English subtitles
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic yearning and its fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career. An NYFF38 Main Slate selection and an NYFF58 Revivals selection. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with Jet Tone Films, L’Immagine Ritrovata, One Cool, and Robert Mackenzie Sound. Supervised and approved by Wong Kar Wai. A Janus Films release. 

As Tears Go By - New Restoration!/ 열혈남아
1988, Hong Kong, 102m
Cantonese with English subtitles
Wong’s scintillating debut feature is a hyper-cool crime thriller with flashes of the impressionistic, daydream visual style for which he would become renowned. Set amid Hong Kong’s neon-lit gangland underworld, this operatic saga of ambition, honor, and revenge stars Andy Lau as a small-time mob enforcer who finds himself torn between a burgeoning romance with his ailing cousin (Maggie Cheung, in the first of her iconic collaborations with Wong) and his loyalty to his loose-cannon partner in crime (Jacky Cheung) whose reckless attempts to make a name for himself unleash a spiral of violence. Marrying the pulp pleasures of the gritty Hong Kong action drama with hints of the head-rush romanticism Wong would push to intoxicating heights throughout the 1990s, As Tears Go By was a box office smash that heralded the arrival of one of contemporary cinema’s most electrifying talents. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata and One Cool. A Janus Films release. 

Days of Being Wild - New Restoration!/ 아비정전
1990, Hong Kong, 94m
Cantonese, Shanghainese, Tagalog, and Mandarin with English subtitles
Wong Kar Wai’s breakthrough sophomore feature represents the first full flowering of his signature swooning style. The first film in a loosely connected, ongoing cycle that includes In the Mood for Love and 2046, this ravishing existential reverie drifts through the Hong Kong of the 1960s with a band of wayward twenty-somethings—including a disaffected playboy (Leslie Cheung) searching for his birth mother, a lovelorn woman (Maggie Cheung) hopelessly enamored with him, and a policeman (Andy Lau) caught in the middle of their turbulent relationship—who pull together and push apart in a cycle of frustrated desire. The director’s inaugural collaboration with both cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who lends the film its gorgeously gauzy texture, and actor Tony Leung, who appears briefly in a tantalizing teaser for a never-realized sequel, Days of Being Wild is an exhilarating expression of Wong’s trademark themes of time, dislocation, and restless yearning. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata and One Cool. A Janus Films release. 

Chungking Express - New Restoration!/ 중경삼림
1994, Hong Kong, 102m
Cantonese and Mandarinwith English subtitles
The whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of ’90s cinema and the film that made Wong an instant icon. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express takeout restaurant stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. Anything goes in the filmmaker’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of longing. An NYFF32 selection. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, Jet Tone, One Cool, and 3H Sound Studio. It was supervised and approved by Wong Kar Wai. A Janus Films release. 

Fallen Angels - New Restoration! / 타락천사
1995, Hong Kong, 99m
Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
Lost souls reach for human connection amid the glimmering nighttime world of Hong Kong in Wong’s neon-soaked nocturne. Originally conceived as a segment of Chungking Express only to spin off on its own woozy axis, Fallen Angels plays like the dark, moody flip side to Wong’s breakout feature as it charts the subtly interlacing fates of a handful of urban loners, including a coolly detached hitman (Leon Lai) looking to go straight, his business partner (Michelle Reis) who secretly yearns for him, and a mute delinquent (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who wreaks mischief by night. Swinging between hard-boiled noir and slapstick lunacy with giddy abandon, Wong’s fifth feature is both a dizzying city symphony and a poignant meditation on love, loss, and longing in a metropolis that never sleeps. An NYFF35 selection. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, Jet Tone, and One Cool. It was supervised and approved by Wong Kar Wai. A Janus Films release. 

Happy Together - New Restoration! /해피 투게더
1997, Hong Kong, 96m
Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish with English subtitles
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong’s raw, lushly stylized portrayal of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent pattern of infatuation and destructive jealousy. Capturing the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBTQ community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish portrait of the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and delirious. Shot by Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and saturated color, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire. An NYFF35 selection. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, Jet Tone, and One Cool. It was supervised and approved by Wong Kar Wai. A Janus Films release.

The Hand [Extended Cut] /에로스
2004, Hong Kong, 56m
Mandarin with English subtitles
Like In the Mood for Love, The Hand is set in the hazy Hong Kong of the 1960s, but its characters couldn’t be more different from the earlier film’s restrained, haunted lovers. Originally produced as part of the omnibus film Eros, The Hand—presented here in its extended cut for the first time—tells the tale of Zhang (Chang Chen), a shy tailor’s assistant enraptured by a mysterious client, Miss Hua (Gong Li). A hypnotic tale of obsession, repression, and class divisions, The Hand finds Wong continuing his transition from the frenetic, energized style of his earlier films into a register that is lush with emotional grandeur. A Janus Films release.

2046 - New Restoration!
2004, Hong Kong, 129m
Cantonese, Japanese, and Mandarin with English subtitles
In Wong’s future-set 2046 (a loose continuation of Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love), the titular number is many things at once—the year when mainland China assumes absolute control of Hong Kong; the number of the hotel room across from that of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), inhabited by a parade of women he pursues and abandons; and the name of the mysterious place where disappointed lovers escape to in Chow’s erotic science-fiction novel. Wong’s concentration and control—of the Cinemascope frame, light, color, and the most minute gestures—are at their most accomplished in a work enamored of the limitless expanse of memory and imagination, where reality and fiction dissolve into regret and yearning. Leung’s reprisal of the affable, self-mocking Chow, this time with a bitter edge, is extraordinary. Faye Wong, Carina Lau, Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, and an electrifying Ziyi Zhang are the women in his life, indelible as ghosts from a forgotten past. The 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the original 35mm elements by Sony Pictures Classics, in collaboration with Jet Tone Films, L’Immagine Ritrovata, One Cool, and Robert Mackenzie Sound. The restoration was approved by Wong Kar Wai. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Ashes of Time Redux/ 동사서독 리덕스
1994/2008, Hong Kong, 93m
Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
A film whose complicated production took such a toll on Wong that he wrote and shot Chungking Express during its editing process, Ashes of Time Redux is a hallucinatory wuxia like no other. First released in 1994 and then re-edited and re-scored in 2008, Wong’s time-slipping picaresque takes loose inspiration from Jin Yong's novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes, focusing on a lovesick, embittered mercenary (Leslie Cheung), who acts as an agent for other swordsmen of fortune. Working with regular production designer William Chang, cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and a superb ensemble (Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, and Jacky Cheung), Wong constructs an intricate, enigmatic vision of ancient warriors ensnared by the play of time and memory. An NYFF46 selection.

My Blueberry Nights/ 마이 블루베리 나이츠
2007, China/France/USA/Hong Kong, 90m
Though it was Wong's first English-language film, My Blueberry Nights is in many ways an extension of his previous work: it began as a short film, originally meant to be part of the In the Mood for Love timeline, and is marked by the director’s typically romantic sensibility and dynamic manipulation of color (regular collaborator William Chang serves again as production designer and editor). Pop star Norah Jones makes her film debut as a heartbroken New Yorker who takes to the road after meeting a café owner (Jude Law), and along the way encounters others as lovesick and lonely as herself, including a down-on-her-luck gambler (Natalie Portman), a troubled cop (David Strathairn), and his estranged wife (Rachel Weisz). A free-flowing romance spanning New York, Memphis, and Las Vegas, My Blueberry Nights explores, with Wong’s charged affection, the suffering of heartbreak and the restorative vitality of the American landscape. 

The Grandmaster/ 일대종사 
2013, Hong Kong/China, 108m (USA) & 130m (HK)
Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
Nearly 10 years in the making, Wong’s latest feature to date is perhaps his most ambitious project, a propulsive action epic inspired by the life and times of the legendary kung fu master, Ip Man (played by Tony Leung with effortless precision and cool). The story spans the tumultuous Republican era that followed the fall of China’s last dynasty: a time of chaos, divided loyalties, and war, but also the golden age of Chinese martial arts. Filmed in a range of stunning locations that include the snow-swept landscapes of Northeast China and the country’s subtropical South, The Grandmaster—presented in this retrospective in both the U.S. and Hong Kong theatrical cuts—features exquisitely staged action and virtuosic performances by Leung and Ziyi Zhang, who lends a transfixing allure to the fictional Gong Er, Ip’s friend and fellow martial artist.