TAN Chui Mui

At the age of 5, Tan Chui Mui made a small wooden stool. At 8, she drove a pick up truck onto a column. At 9, she printed a children’s magazine.  At 12, she finished reading an Encyclopedia. At 17, she had a column in a student weekly paper. At 21, she received a computer animation degree. At 27, she made her first film Love Conquers All. At 38, she gave birth to a child. At 41, she decided to learn martial arts. 

Tan Chui Mui was born in Kuantan, Malaysia in 1978. Her film Love Conquers All (2006) won the New Currents Awards and FIPRESCI International Critics’ Award at the Busan International Film Festival and won Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Also, her film Everyday Everyday (2009) won the top prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. She was invited to the Cannes Cinefondation Residency, and she was a mentor for many filmmaking workshops. In 2015, she initiated Next New Wave, a brand under NNW Films to design and organize filmmaking related workshop, aims to provide young film talents in Malaysia a platform to learn directly from renowned filmmakers in the region. In 2017, she started SeaShorts, a film festival that focuses on showing Southeast Asian short films. Her recent film Barbarian Invasion (2021) won the Jury Grand Prix of Golden Goblet Awards at the Shanghai International Film Festival.