Ang Lee, born in 1954 in Chaozhou, Pingtung, is Taiwan's most representative film director on the world stage and the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Director. Raised in a family that valued education, he went to the United States as a young man to study film production at New York University, laying a solid creative foundation. He first drew notice with his "Father Knows Best" trilogy — "Pushing Hands," "The Wedding Banquet," and "Eat Drink Man Woman" — subtly depicting the tensions between Eastern and Western culture and family ethics. He then moved into English-language film, directing works such as "Sense and Sensibility" and showing a command of different cultural subjects. In 2000 his martial-arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" swept the international scene and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, bringing Chinese-language cinema into the global mainstream. In 2006, with "Brokeback Mountain," he became the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Director, and in 2013 he won it a second time for "Life of Pi." His works span art film, martial arts, epic, and fantasy, consistently attentive to themes of human nature, desire, and cultural identity. He is known for a gentle, restrained style and precise storytelling, combining artistic depth with commercial success. Lee is seen as a symbol of Taiwanese cinema and Chinese-language cultural export, his creative path across East and West long a key marker of Taiwan's soft power.

• Won international acclaim and an Oscar with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2001)

• Twice won the Academy Award for Best Director (2006, 2013)