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Shi Nansun, the Hong Kong producer and executive who co-founded Film Workshop and helped establish international distribution networks for Chinese-language cinema, died Monday at Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital. She
was 75.
In a statement, Film Workshop said Shi had been in declining health since 2022 due to complications affecting her immune system, and that recent infections had led to “multiple organ dysfunction.” The company said she died peacefully at 8:51 p.m. local time on July 13, with family by her side, and that memorial and funeral details would be released at a later date.
Shi’s path into the industry ran through Hong Kong television, where she worked through the mid-to-late 1970s before Cinema City Studios brought her on as executive director in 1981, putting her in charge of the young company’s overseas sales and festival strategy at a time when Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest still dominated the local market. Three years later, she left with director Tsui Hark, whom she would go on to marry in 1996 and divorce in 2014, to start their own outfit, Film Workshop, giving Tsui a base for projects too idiosyncratic for Cinema City’s commercial slate.
Under that banner, Shi built a producing and distribution record that stretched from 1984’s “Shanghai Blues” through genre staples such as “A Better Tomorrow” and the “Once Upon a Time in China” series, while pushing Hong Kong titles into markets across Southeast Asia, Europe and North America well before that was standard practice for local studios. Her reach later extended beyond Film Workshop. She produced 2002’s “Infernal Affairs” during a stint at Media Asia, a film Martin Scorsese would remake as “The Departed” four years later. She also worked with Bona Film Group on titles including the “Overheard” series and “A Simple Life,” and has run sales company Distribution Workshop with Jeffrey Chan since 2007. Her premiere credits include “A Simple Life” at Venice in 2011 and “Bends” at Cannes in 2013. Her last producer credit was 2025’s “Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants,” directed by Tsui Hark.
That body of work drew honors across three continents. France named her an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2013, and she later received the Berlinale Camera Award and a lifetime achievement honor from the Far East Film Festival in Udine. She also served on the jury of the Berlin and Cannes film festivals. In 2025, Shi and Tsui Hark received a joint Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards, closing out a partnership that had shaped the city’s cinema for more than four decades.
