Ann Hui, the Hong Kong New Wave pioneer whose films have chronicled the lives of her city’s ordinary and overlooked for nearly half a century, will receive the 2026 Camellia Award at the Busan International Film Festival, presented in partnership with Chanel.

The 79-year-old director will accept the prize — awarded to filmmakers who have advanced the standing of women in the industry — at the festival’s opening ceremony on Oct. 6 at the Busan Cinema Center.

“In my previous years I felt unwilling to receive such taking-stock prizes because I wished to continue making movies,” Hui said in a statement. “Now that I’m nearly eighty and find it difficult to make a film, I think the prize comes just in time for me to appreciate it more.”

Since her 1979 debut The Secret, Hui has directed 27 features and two feature-length documentaries. Her work helped define the Hong Kong New Wave, with films that move across genres but return to her perennial theme — the struggles of everyday life at the margins, portrayed without sentiment: Vietnamese refugees in Boat People (1982), a daughter’s reckoning with her Japanese mother in Song of the Exile (1990), the small dignities of working-class life in The Way We Are (2008), an aging servant and the family she raised in A Simple Life (2011).

Hui is already one of the most decorated directors of her generation. She has won best director at the Hong Kong Film Awards six times, more than any filmmaker in the ceremony’s history, and three times at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards. Twice — with Summer Snow in 1995 and A Simple Life in 2011 — her work swept best film, director, actor and actress at the Hong Kong awards. In 2020, she became the first female director to receive Venice’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, sharing that year’s honor with Tilda Swinton. She was previously honored in Busan in 2914 as the Asian Filmmaker of the Year.

Established in 2024, the Camellia Award takes its name from a flower that is both Busan’s civic emblem and, famously, Gabrielle Chanel’s favorite. Korean production designer Ryu Seong-hie (Oldboy, Decision to Leave) was its inaugural recipient, followed last year by Taiwanese actress and filmmaker Sylvia Chang.

“I am so happy to return to Busan,” Hui added, “and meet an audience that is among the most savvy and cinematically literate in the world.”

Hui will be honored alongside Michelle Yeoh, this year’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year, at a ceremony hosted by Pachinko star Kim Minha. The 31st Busan International Film Festival runs Oct. 6-15.

NBC did some method casting on its comedy pilot Newlyweds earlier this year, with Tèa Leoni and Tim Daly, who had tied the knot just months prior, tapped as the titular leads in the multi-camera comedy. It marked an on-screen reunion of the duo who also played a husband and wife on the 2014 CBS drama series Madam Secretary.

The joint casting was not an accident.

“We were kind of sniffing around to play together again,” Leoni said at an NBCUniversal event Monday ahead of Newlyweds’ series debut this fall. “We had a lot of fun on Madam Secretary. The world got darker, and we wanted to get lighter. We thought we’ve done this particular medium, and loved it, and we wanted to spend our days together.” 


Added Daly, “Listen, we spent six years pretending to be married on TV, and I would get to do it again, but we actually are married. It’s a miracle, it’s really fun, it’s cool, and we still like each other.”


Said Leoni, “It took 12 years, but we got there.”

Newlyweds tells the story of a free‑spirited woman (Leoni) and a buttoned‑up professor (Daly) who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship.

“We’ve been told that we have chemistry, we were told that on Madam Secretary, and, hopefully, we exported that into this show,” Daly said.

Added Leoni, “We haven’t lost it.”

While they have proven to have an on-screen couple chemistry, being one in real life has its advantages too.

“One, we don’t need an intimacy coordinator because we are licensed to do whatever we want,” Daly said.

Additionally, “We get to start ahead of the game,” Leoni said, giving an example with an exchange between their characters on their first date in the Newlyweds pilot.

“I was looking at James, aka Tim, and I can read him, I know where he’s going,” Leoni said. “We just found this moment because ‑‑ maybe that happened somewhere else, but it happens in our life all the time, and it’s fun. It’s really fun to act with someone that you know so well because we are a little ahead with each other. It’s great, we like it.”


Newlyweds is created and executive produced by Gail Lerner and Jaimie Lee Curtis, with the Oscar winner also recurring on the show.

Curtis was asked about being a boss on the show.

“I like to refer to myself as the ‘HBIC,’ head bitch in charge,” she said. “I’m 68 years old, I have wanted to be a boss my whole life. If you ask my children, my husband, they would tell you I’ve been a boss my whole life, but I’ve been waiting my whole life, literally, to be able to manifest ideas and bring what I love about what I do into the workplace I do it in. I’ve been doing it not as a boss for a long, long time, and now I’m a boss, and I love it.”

Curtis’ title choice was clearly by design.

When asked what she brings of herself to her role as James’ (Daly) ex-wife, she did not mince words. “I’m really a bitch,” she quipped. 


Reggie Bannister, the horror icon that starred in the “Phantasm” film series, died on Sunday after a decade-long health battle, his wife Gigi shared on social media. He was 80.

In a Facebook post shared on Monday evening, Bannister’s wife revealed that she checked in on the actor at 3:45 a.m. Sunday morning, where she found him “panting but quiet and asleep.”

“I was exhausted so I went back to sleep,” she continued. “At 0600 hours, our kitty, GG (Grey Guy) who has been sleeping on Reggie’s bed at night, came running upstairs and jumped onto the bed meowing! I went down to see what the problem was…Somewhere inside… in my soul… I knew. Reggie was gone.”

As Gigi went on, she recalled her husband looking “so quiet and peaceful” after his passing, adding, “Like he was asleep.”

“In his bed, ‘In Our Mountain Home’ as his song goes,” she further shared. “In the snap of fingers, my best friend, my confidant, my partner, my soul mate was transitioned to another dimension – a higher plane. He no longer suffers. He’s no longer in pain. That gives me solace. I will see you on the flip side, honey bunny. Save me a hug! Wait for me.”

Bannister entered home hospice care in February of last year, with his friend Russell “GreWolf” Mauck confirming at the time that the actor had been previously treated at a VA hospital as his “condition had progressed to the next stage.”

In a GoFundMe launched for Bannister’s hospice costs, it was said that the actor was facing “the challenges of Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.”

Born in Long Beach, Calif. on Sept. 29, 1945, Bannister went on to serve in U.S. military during the Vietnam War, where he was reportedly exposed to Agent Orange.

Through the GI bill, Bannister chose to study acting, later landing the part of armed, ex-ice cream man Reggie in 1979’s “Phantasm,” which was directed by Don Coscarelli. He went on to appear in the sequels, including 1988’s “Phantasm II,” 1994’s “Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead,” 1998’s “Phantasm IV: Oblivion” and 2016’s “Phantasm: Ravager.”

Other credits included “Jim the World’s Greatest,” “Survival Quest,” “Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation,” “Wishmaster” and “Not Another B Movie.”