Andrew Lau Wai-keung came up the hard way. He talked his way into Shaw Brothers in 1981, hired as a production assistant before maneuvering into the camera unit, and apprenticed on set before emerging as a cinematographer by mid-decade. When he got there, he changed the look of Hong Kong cinema. He shot the nocturnal, handheld charge of Ringo Lam's City on Fire (1987) and Wong Kar-wai's debut As Tears Go By (1988), the latter earning him his first Hong Kong Film Award nomination for Best Cinematography. He moved into directing with Against All (1990). In 1995 he co-founded BoB & Partners with Wong Jing and Manfred Wong; the next year Young and Dangerous became a phenomenon and launched a wave of comic-to-film adaptations. He pushed local spectacle into the digital era with The Storm Riders (1998), that year's highest-grossing Hong Kong film. Infernal Affairs (2002), co-directed with Alan Mak, won Best Director for Lau and Mak at both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards; Martin Scorsese remade it as The Departed, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. His latest feature, The Dumpling Queen (2025), led China's May Day box office for three straight weekends.