Heiward Mak

Heiward Mak Hei-yan is a Hong Kong film director, writer and producer. Her work has been featured at various international film festivals including Singapore, Bratislava and Fribourg. In 2011, she won a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Screenplay for her writing on Love in a Puff.

Biography
Mak was born in 1984 and grew up in Tai Wai, Hong Kong where she attend Sha Tin Government Secondary School. She received a diploma in graphic design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2003. After graduation, she worked as a graphic artist before enrolling at City University of Hong Kong within the school of Creative Media. Her thesis film Lovers’ Lover won a Gold Award at the IFVA in their Open Category section. Her teacher Patrick Tam later showed Lovers’ Lover to actor Eric Tsang. This landed Mak a casting job on the comedy film Men Suddenly in Black 2, which Tsang acted in and co-produced. Mak had written a few lines of dialogue for the casting process as the screenplay had not been written that early into production. After Tsang read what Mak had written, he offered her a co-writer position. 

She graduated with a BA in Creative Media in 2006.

In 2008, Mak made her directorial debut when producer Eric Tsang gave her the opportunity to film a remake of Winds of September which later became High Noon. For her work she was nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Director and given a Film of Merit by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society.

After directing the film Ex, she worked alongside to Pang Ho-cheung to make romantic comedy Love in a Puff which went on to earn her a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Screenplay.