Dayyan Eng

Dayyan Eng known as Wu Shixian to audiences in Asia is an American director writer and producer of Chinese English and Persian ancestry who grew up in three continents He studied film arts at the University of Washington and transferred to the Beijing Film Academy where he finished his undergraduate studies in directing Engs films have garnered accolades and awards for himself and actors hes worked with which have included top stars in Asia and Hollywood Starting his career directing and producing numerous TV commercials for the Asian and global markets Eng first gained recognition for his film Bus 44 The film premiered and won awards at the 2001 Venice Film Festival and 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was invited to 2002 Cannes Film Festival Directors Fortnight becoming the first Chinese short film to be invited in all three festivals history The film was covered extensively in the Chinese media and was critically acclaimed in both China and Europe and gained TV and theatrical distribution in territories worldwide In 2005 Eng wrote and directed his first feature film Waiting Alone starring an ensemble cast of Chinese stars including Xia Yu Li Bingbing Gong Beibi and featuring cameos from some of Asias most wellknown actors including Hong Kong superstar Chow Yunfat Waiting Alone became a hit and went on to receive 3 nominations including Best Picture at the Chinese academy awards the first ever in the history of the awards by a foreign director The film remains the highestrated romantic comedy in China to date on Douban and other review sites as of 2023 In 2007 Eng was invited to direct the firstever opening short for the Chinese academy awards ceremony He got some of Asias biggest stars Ziyi Zhang Liu Ye and Ge You to spoof the actionmovie genre in a humorous sendup on Chinas national TV In 2011 Eng wrote directed and produced Inseparable starring Oscarwinner Kevin Spacey Daniel Wu Gong Beibi Yan Ni and Peter Stormare The quirky psychological suspensedramedy debuted at the Busan International Film Festival in 2011 to positive reviews and was released in China in May 2012 Inseparable was named as one of The Wall Street Journals Top 10 Most Notable Asian Films of the Year Eng directed cowrote and produced the 2017 indie fantasycomedy Wished cowritten by Justin Malen which beat local box office estimates at the time to gross RMB70 million in two weeks It held the highest audience scores averaging 8010 for liveaction comedies released that summer and gained a total of 100000000 paid views across the top three online movie platforms in just over a fortnight Wished starred Xia Yu Yan Ni Kpop star Victoria Song along with cameos from Chinas biggest names including Daniel Wu Wang Baoqiang Ning Jing Wished went on to win a Golden Angel Award at the 2017 Chinese American Film Festival Best Fantasy Film and Best Director awards at the LA Film Awards and New York Film Awards in 2018 It was also an official selection at the 37th Hawaii International Film Festival Wished was subsequently optioned by a US production company to be remade into a Hollywood film with Eng attached to executive produce and optionally direct Eng divides his time between Los Angeles and Beijing Hes multilingual and reads and writes English Chinese and Farsi