Wong Kar-wai Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
68 free Wong Kar-wai trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Wong Kar-wai makes films without scripts, shoots forty takes of a glance and delivers prints to Cannes a day late, and the results sit on lists of the greatest films ever made. This quiz walks through his whole career, from a Shanghai childhood and TVB soap scripts to As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, the six-week miracle of Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046, The Grandmaster and his first TV series. Along the way you will be asked about the pineapple tins and the Cranberries cover, Iguazu Falls and Piazzolla's tangos, Angkor Wat, the 15-month shoot, Norah Jones and Lawrence Block, Ip Man and Wing Chun, plus the people who built the look: Christopher Doyle, William Chang, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and producer Esther Chen. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a couple of the films; the expert tier asks for composers, novelists and restoration labs. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Wong and his individual films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Hong Kong cinema and on Cannes Film Festival winners.
30 of 68 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Though his films are steeped in Hong Kong, Wong Kar-wai was born in 1958 in which mainland Chinese city?
Shanghai
Shanghai was home until he was five, when his parents left for Hong Kong; the border closed before his older brother and sister could follow, and he did not see them for ten years.
Q 02What job did Wong Kar-wai's father take after the family moved to Hong Kong?
Managing a nightclub
Managing a nightclub put him in charge of the Bayside, which Wong remembers as one of Hong Kong's best, smart enough to host the Beatles when they came to town.
Q 03Before a television training course set him on the road to directing, what did Wong Kar-wai study at the Hong Kong Polytechnic?
Graphic design
Graphic design led not to a studio but to a television network's training course for would-be directors, where he ended up writing scripts instead.
Q 04Which 1988 crime drama was Wong Kar-wai's directorial debut?
As Tears Go By
As Tears Go By was the safe gangster picture his backers wanted, and its success with Hong Kong audiences paid for the far more personal film he made next.
Q 05Wong's debut feature was inspired by which Martin Scorsese film?
Mean Streets
Mean Streets lent the story of a small-time gangster forever bailing out a reckless friend, and critics likened Jacky Cheung's frenzied turn to Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy.
Q 06Which Hong Kong director took the young screenwriter Wong Kar-wai under his wing and became his mentor?
Patrick Tam
Patrick Tam found a protégé in the young screenwriter and had him script his 1987 gangster drama; a year later the pupil was directing a gangster film of his own.
Q 07Who played the disillusioned playboy Yuddy at the centre of Days of Being Wild?
Leslie Cheung
Leslie Cheung led a cast drawn from the cream of Hong Kong's young stars, yet the downbeat film flopped spectacularly on release, only to be showered with awards and acclaim afterwards.
Q 08In Days of Being Wild, Yuddy learns his birth mother lives in which country?
The Philippines
The Philippines is where he finally finds her house, only for her to refuse to see him, and the trip ends with him shot dead on a train.
Q 09Which cinematographer first worked with Wong on Days of Being Wild and shot his next six films?
Christopher Doyle
Christopher Doyle left when In the Mood for Love overran and Mark Lee Ping-bin finished it; Wong later likened Doyle's camera to jazz, 'improvised, explosive', and Lee's to something classical and precise.
Q 10Wong's longtime cinematographer, known in Chinese as Dou Ho-fung, was born in which country?
Australia
Australia: born in Sydney in 1952, he shipped out with the merchant navy at 18 and worked as an oil driller and a cow herder before he ever picked up a film camera.
Q 11Which production company did Wong form with Jeff Lau in 1992?
Jet Tone Films
Jet Tone Films grew out of a flop: after Days of Being Wild failed at the box office its producer dropped the planned sequel, and Wong spent about a year looking for anyone willing to back him.
Q 12Ashes of Time was loosely based on The Legend of the Condor Heroes, a novel by which author?
Jin Yong
Jin Yong's plot went unused: Wong borrowed only a few of the novel's ageing martial artists and invented their younger days, turning the adaptation he was hired to make into a prequel of his own.
Q 13Under what title did Wong re-edit and re-score his 1994 wuxia film for release in 2008?
Ashes of Time Redux
Q 21Fallen Angels, grown from a story cut out of Chungking Express, has a score imitating which trip-hop band Wong couldn't afford?
Massive Attack
Massive Attack proved too expensive, so Wong asked his Hong Kong composer to write something like them, and the film's signature track reworks their Karmacoma.
Q 22Who plays the hitman in Fallen Angels?
Leon Lai
Leon Lai's killer rarely meets the woman who books his jobs and cleans his rooms, insisting partners shouldn't get emotionally involved, while she is secretly in love with him.
Q 23What kind of lens did the cinematographer use extensively in Fallen Angels to distort the actors' faces?
Wide-angle
Ashes of Time Redux was a rescue job: Wong found his original negatives rotting in a closing film lab, pieced the film together from copies scattered around the world and added cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma.
Q 14At which festival did Ashes of Time compete for the Golden Lion in 1994?
Venice
Venice gave its cinematography prize to the film's desert images, yet the wuxia epic failed commercially at home, a poor return on its starry cast and its cost.
Q 15Chungking Express was conceived and completed in roughly how long?
Six weeks
Six weeks took it from first idea to final edit: Wong wrote by day and shot by night in story order, calling it a holiday after the two years he had just spent on Ashes of Time.
Q 16Which song does Faye Wong's character play over and over in Chungking Express?
"California Dreamin'"
"California Dreamin'" loops so often through the film's second half that it becomes Faye's signature, the sound of a snack-bar worker who would rather be somewhere else.
Q 17In Chungking Express, Cop 223 buys tins of which fruit that expire on 1 May?
Pineapple
Pineapple tins dated 1 May pile up as the jilted Cop 223 waits a month for his ex to come back, convinced that everything, love included, carries an expiry date.
Q 18Wong's 1994 film about two lovelorn policemen takes its English title's first word from what?
Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui
Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, a warren of guesthouses and stalls on Nathan Road, hosts the first story; 'Express' comes from the Midnight Express snack bar over in Lan Kwai Fong.
Q 19Faye Wong sings a Cantonese cover of which Cranberries hit in Chungking Express?
"Dreams"
"Dreams" soars, in her own Cantonese version, while Faye lets herself into the policeman's flat and secretly rearranges it, a home invasion the film plays as courtship.
Q 20Which director's label, Rolling Thunder Pictures, brought Chungking Express to American audiences?
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino loved the film so much that he put it out through his own short-lived label in 1996, and his championing helped turn it into Wong's international breakthrough.
Wide-angle lenses, held right up to the actors, flip the look of Chungking Express: there long lenses shot from far off made people feel close, while here they are close yet seem far away.
Q 24Takeshi Kaneshiro's character in Fallen Angels, Ho Chi-mo, is what?
A mute ex-convict
A mute ex-convict, he takes over other people's shops after closing time and bullies late-night passers-by into paying for haircuts, laundry and ice cream they never asked for.
Q 25Happy Together follows a Hong Kong couple who travel to which country?
Argentina
Argentina was an escape: asked why Buenos Aires, Wong said he didn't want to make a film about Hong Kong in 1997, then found the finished film was about home after all.
Q 26Which prize did Wong win at Cannes in 1997 for Happy Together, a first for Hong Kong?
Best Director
Best Director had never gone to a Hong Kong filmmaker, yet Wong waved it away when asked: 'it makes no difference, it's just something you can put on an ad.'
Q 27In Happy Together, the couple break up after getting lost on the way to which landmark?
Iguazu Falls
Iguazu Falls is reached only by Fai, alone, once he has earned his fare home; Wong said he wanted something that never changes, so the waterfall stays the same while the people keep changing.
Q 28Happy Together's English title is borrowed from a 1967 hit by which band?
The Turtles
The Turtles' sunny hit is saved for the very end, as Fai heads home through Taipei, so a film about a couple tearing each other apart closes on a rush of security and homecoming.
Q 29Whose bandoneon music recurs throughout Happy Together's soundtrack?
Astor Piazzolla
Astor Piazzolla's melancholy music set the mood for a slower, more linear film: with everyone now expecting fragments from him, Wong said, 'we had to move on.'
Q 30In the Mood for Love's betrayed neighbours grow close while writing what together?
A martial-arts serial
A martial-arts serial gives them a reason to keep meeting, and the hotel room he rents so they can write unobserved is numbered 2046, the title of Wong's next feature.