CHINESE actress and director Jia Ling made history by becoming the first female filmmaker to have directed the highest-grossing film of the year, Sin Chew Daily reported.
Her 2024 film YOLO raked in 3.46bil yuan (RM2.12bil) at the box office, according to Maoyan, a website in China that tracks movie earnings.
What stood in contrast was that Jia was the only female director in the top 10 list of highest-grossing films in China for 2024.
It was earlier reported that Jia, who weighed around 80kg at the start of filming YOLO, put on an additional 20kg to play protagonist Du Leying.
Over the one year of filming, she kept up a strict training regimen and stuck to a diet to lose close to 50kg to play someone forever changed by her passion for boxing.
> The daily also reported that a group of hikers in Taiwan drew flak online after leaving one of their members at the top of the mountain when she was unable to continue the journey due to altitude sickness.
The incident took place on Jan 1 when a group of eight hikers went on a trip to the Sakakivan mountain in southeastern Taiwan.
They organised the trip after being introduced on Line, a popular messaging app in Taiwan.
When the group reached 3,200m above sea level, 51-year-old Huang was suddenly struck by a bout of altitude sickness.
When she was unable to continue, the remaining seven members gave her a tent and their food before descending.
When they reached the foot of the mountain, they called authorities for help. It took firefighters two days to rescue Huang.
One of the hikers in the group, known only as Lin, said the emergency call taker was shocked when they heard the group had left a sick member alone.
Lin explained that all of them had to go to work the next day and “continue with their lives”.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.
