Tony Leung Ka Fai Wins First Golden Rooster Best Actor Award

Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai has won his first Golden Rooster award for best actor, for playing the villain in The Shadow's Edge, directed by Larry Yang. The Hollywood Reporter reported the win from the ceremony, which was held inside the Xiamen Strait Grand Theater in Xiamen, Fujian Province.

The Golden Rooster Awards are the highlight of the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, an annual state-run event that honours Chinese cinema. The festival's top film prize, Best Feature Film, went to Dead to Rights. Director Shen Ao accepted it from Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed director who presented the award.

Dead to Rights is a World War II drama. It is set around the Nanjing massacre and the true story of a photo studio that documented it. Gao Ye, who stars in the film alongside Liu Haoran, also won best actress. The film has collected more than $380 million at the box office, according to the same report.

Lan Hongchun's Dear You took two prizes: the Special Jury Prize and Best Screenplay. The film has earned around $300 million at the box office.

The report also noted that eight of the top 10 films at China's box office in 2025, counted year to date, were domestic productions, meaning films made within the country rather than co-productions or imports. That gives the awards a home-grown audience to speak to.

Zhang Yimou also opened the festival's industry programme, which brings together filmmakers, financiers and distributors. He led a seminar called Stories That Travel: Chinese and Asian Cinema in Dialogue with the World. The same report said he is developing an adaptation of Liu Cixin's science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem.

For a general reader, the takeaway is simple. China's biggest state-backed film prizes went to a war drama, a village-style crowd pleaser and a villain's showcase, and the industry used the event to talk about how Chinese films reach audiences abroad.