Taiwanese-American filmmaker Ang Lee (李安), who has won two Oscars and numerous other accolades over the years, has been named the recipient of the Directors Guild of America’s (DGA) 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lee is to be honored at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Feb. 8 next year in recognition of his “extraordinary achievements in the art of cinema and motion picture direction,” the organization announced on Tuesday.
“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker. For over 30 years, he has directed a dynamic body of work that boldly cuts across genres — from period drama to comedy, adventure to western, superhero to martial arts — always fearlessly taking on new challenges, never repeating himself, and consistently achieving cinematic excellence,” DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter was quoted as saying on the organization’s Web site.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
Lee, 70, has won two Academy Awards for best director — for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi — and is also a two-time Golden Globe Best Director winner for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain.
Glatter said that through his films, he “invites his audiences to explore complex characters that linger in your heart and mind long after the screen has gone dark.”
Lee said in a statement that was it was a momentous achievement for him to be named for the Lifetime Achievement Award.
It is “an opportunity to reflect on what my work has meant to this amazing community of my fellow filmmakers,” said Lee, who joined the DGA in 1996.
Born in Pingtung County in 1954, Lee graduated from National Taiwan College of Arts in 1975 then went on to study in the US.
During his pursuit of a master’s degree at New York University, he served as an assistant director for a student film by Spike Lee, who was the DGA’s previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Ang Lee in 2021 was honored with a fellowship by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts — the highest award given by the academy.
Last month he became the first Taiwanese to receive the Praemium Imperiale, a global arts prize awarded by the Japan Art Association.
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