Running on Karma produced by One Hundred Years of Film Co. Ltd. won the Best Film prize of the 23rd Hong Kong Film Award conferred Sunday night.

Johnnie To obtained Best Director prize for the film PTU.

Andy Lau won the Best Actor prize for his role in Running on Karma for his years efforts on playing various roles in Hong Kong films.

The Best Actress fell in the hands of Cecilla Cheung who played actress in the film Lost in Time.

Andy Lau (R) and Cecilla Cheung

Tony Leung Ka Fai obtained Best Supporting Actor prize for his role in Men Suddenly in Black while Hosie Ho won Best Supporting Actress prize for her role in film Naked Ambition.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa attended the award conferring ceremony and conferred Best Asia Film prize to a representative from Japan's Shockiku Co. Ltd. for film The Twilight Samurai.

He said he likes Hong Kong films and Hong Kong-Chinese mainland made films. He said quite a number of Hong Kong films are of international fame and he felt proud of Hong Kong films. He have seen Infernal Affairs, Hero, Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragon and some other films.

Tung said his government would further support Hong Kong's film industry and expects Hong Kong films to become more influential in the international market and become more prosperous.

According to CEPA, which has been implemented from the beginning of this year, more Hong Kong films will have the access to the Chinese mainland market.

Quite a number of Chinese mainland film directors and stars such as Feng Xiaogang, Jiang Wen, Zhou Xun and Xu Jinglei were invited to the award conferring ceremony Sunday night.

(Xinhua News Agency April 5, 2004)