Johnnie To’s crime drama Life Without Principle was named best film at the 55th Asia-Pacific Film Festival awards presented at Macau’s Venetian Resort Hotel, Deadline said.

The festival originally was to take place in September in Shanghai, the first time the event would have been held in mainland China, but was cancelled after the Chinese government raised objections about the fest’s secretariat being based in Taiwan. To’s saga about a criminal, a bank officer and a cop caught up in the global financial crisis — Hong Kong’s submission for best foreign-language film at the Oscars — also garnered the best supporting actor gong for Lo Hoi-pang.

Eddie Garcia won best actor for his performance as a lonely gay man befriended by a tricycle driver in Filipino director Jun Lana’s drama Bwakaw.

Gwai Lun-mei was named best actress for Taiwanese writer-director Yang Ya-che’s romantic drama Gf*Bf, which charts the progress of three people who meet in high school in 1985 for more than two decades.

Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda took the best director prize for I Wish, a drama about a fourth-grader who lives with his mother and grandparents and yearns to be reunited with his younger brother and father who live in a faraway town. Japan’s Makiko Watanabe won best supporting actress for her role as a divorcee who sends her teenage daughters to find their estranged father in Capturing Dad.