Written By (Wai Ka-fai, 2009)

Better known as Johnnie To's creative partner and co-founder of To's independent Hong Kong company Milkyway Image, Wai Ka-fai is also one of the most distinctive screenwriters in contemporary cinema. His collaborations with Johnnie To are tinged with the supernatural and the metaphysical, making for scripts packed with cyclical, mirroring movements perfect for To's imagistic direction. Written By, directed solely by Wai, operates with one of his densest screenplays, co-written with Au Kin-yee. Its recursive movement of characters shaping and reshaping each other's fates through fantasy leads to Kaufmanesque blurring of dimensional boundaries, but where Kaufman's work plays on intellectual lines, Wai's endless loops serve to bring his story's immense grief closer and closer to the surface where the characters, and audience, can truly confront it.