Chinese film director Tian Zhuangzhuang walked away with the best director award at the 10th Shanghai International Film Festival that concluded on June 24.

Tian won the honor for his latest feature, The Go Master, a biopic of the legendary 20th century Chinese go game (weiqi) master Wu Ching-yuan, also known as Go Seigen. Wu, 93, who currently lives in Japan, is the most successful weiqi player in history. His devotion to Buddhism in pursuit of mental and emotional balance has made him a legend, both as a person and in his career. Tian said he had admired the weiqi master for many years.

Though some moviegoers have criticized Tian's prize-winning film for being boring, the director remains defiant about his choice of subject, saying the film has a specific audience and is of little interest to those who know little about weiqi. He said the production, based on Wu's autobiography Never Best in the World, aims to convey Wu's philosophy of harmony as opposed to conflict, and how this can be used to ultimately contribute toward world peace and harmony.

Tian, 55, was born into an artists' family with actor-and-actress parents, from whom he inherited his love for cinema. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, together with Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, two signature figures of China's Fifth Generation directors. But what distinguishes Tian from his peers is his focus on the portrayal of ordinary people and controversial social topics, rather than entertaining blockbusters. His early directorial career featured The Horse Thief in 1986, an ethnic minority story, which fully demonstrates his artistic and emotional style. But the film was a box office failure, as have been most of Tian's films to date.

In 2003, Tian won the San Marco Prize at the Venice Film Festival for his film Springtime in a Small Town. His 2004 movie Delamu, a documentary, which depicts the ancient Tea Horse Road stretching along mountainous Yunnan and Tibet in southwest China, was also widely acclaimed.