WISIT SASANATIENG (Director/Story/Screenplay)
Wisit graduated from Silpakorn University (Bangkok's leading college of art) in the late 1980s. His classmates there included Nonzee Nimibutr and Ek Iemchuen. He entered the advertising industry and had directed numerous innovative commercials for the agency The Film Factory. When Nonzee Nimibutr decided to move from advertising into feature film-making, he invited Wisit to collaborate on his scripts- which is how Wisit came to be credited with the screenplays for both Dan Bireley's and the Young Gangsters and Nang Nak, the two most successful titles in Thai film history. Tears of the Black Tiger marks Wisit's debut as a writer-director. The film won the Dragons & Tigers Award for best new director at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2000.

NONZEE NIMIBUTR (Producer)
Nonzee almost single-handedly rescued the Thai film industry from seemingly terminal decline when he stopped making commercials and started directing features in 1997. A Silpakorn University graduate, he built a team of trusted collaborators at his independent advertising agency Buddy Films and Video. Many of them went on to work on his debut feature Dang Bireley's and the Young Gangsters, a bio-pic about at real-life gangster of the 1950s, which rapidly became the highest grossing Thai film ever made. But Nonzee broke his own record with his second film Nang Nank (1999), a brilliant retelling of a traditional Thai ghost story, which not only did spectacular business in Thailand but also became the first Thai film to win widespread international release. Nonzee was a founding partner in the company Film Bangkok and produced its first two films, Tears of the Black Tiger and Bangkok Dangerous, the latter directed by the Pang Brothers. He has now founded the independent company Cinemasia and is currently completing his third feature Jan Dara, a co-production with the Hong-Kong based Applause Pictures.

EK IEMCHUEN (Production Designer)
A classmate of both Wisit and Nonzee at Silpakorn University in the late 1980s, Ek has become the most respected and influential production designer in the Thai film industry. He has designed all three of Nonzee's features (Dan Bireley's and the Young Gangsters, Nang Nak and Jan Dara), and he worked very closely with Wisit to achieve the unique look and style of The Tears of the Black Tiger.

NATTAWUT KITTIKHUN (Cinematographer)
Nattawut began shooting Thai features a decade ago (his first credit was on the 1990 film Dark Side Romance). He marked time on formulary projects until his talents were finally given the chance to flower in 1999, when Nonzee Nimibutr invited him to photograph Nang Nak. His award-winning work on that film established him as the most in-demand cinematographer in Thailand. In addition to Tears of the Black Tiger he has recently shot Nonzee's Jan Dara and the latest Film Bangkok production, Goal Club

DUSANEE PUINONGPHO (Editor)
Dusanee has previously worked only in advertising; she has been a regular collaborator on commercials with the musician. Amornbhong Methakunavudh at the Wild At Heart agency. Tears of the Black Tiger marks her debut as a feature film editor.

AMORNBHONG METHAKUNAVUDH (Music/Sound Design)
The mainstay of the Wild At Heart of advertising agency, Amornbhong was brought into the film industry by Pen-ek Ratanaruang and worked on his films Fun Bar Karaoke and 6ixty-nin9. He was responsible for the superb surround-sound mix of Nonzee's Nang Nak and for the soundtrack of Yongyoot Thongkongtoon's hit comedy Iron Ladies. His work on Tears of the Black Tiger cleverly pastiches vintage Thai film scores in the same way that he images pastiche their visuals.

CHARTCHAI NGAMSAN (Seua Dum, 'Black Tiger') has been in ads and TV series; he had a supporting role in Nonzee's Dang Bireley's and the Young Gangsters.

STELLA MALUCCHI (Mahesuan) writes songs and dances as well as acting on TV.

SUPAKORN KITSUWON (Police Captain Kumjorn) has a BA in design and has designed furniture.

SOMBAT METHANEE (Fai, the bandit boss) is Thailand's most recognized actor and appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the actor appearing in the highest number of films world wide. He's got more than 600 to his name.

Pestonji (who had part-Persian ancestry) studied engineering in London and made his first amateur short films in Britain in the 1930s. Back in Thailand, he was invited to photograph a film for Prince Phanuphan Yukol- a project which launched him on a new career as a film-maker. He directed his first independent feature Tookata Ja in 1951 and set up his own production company Hanuman the following year. The company produced six features between 1954 and 1964, all but the first two directed by Pestonji himself. The most celebrated of them is the black comedy Rongraem Marok (1957), which takes place entirely on one day and in one location- a mysterious country hotel full of slinky opium traders, Chinese Opera performers, boxers and robbers who are themselves robbed. The negatives of most Hanuman productions were held at Rank Film Laboratories in Britain and were acquired by the Thai Film Archive in the mid-1990s. (adapted from noted by Chalida Uabumrungit)

The sala featured in Tears of the Black Tiger is a lovers' space, imbued with myth. Set on the bank of a river, it is named the Sala raw nang: "Awaiting the maiden". It carries the story of an impossible love, of a failed rendezvous of hearts. A poor woodcutter once met the daughter of a rich man. Despite the social taboo against a cross-class match, the two planned to meet again at the same spot. In anticipation, the woodcutter began cutting wood to build a beautiful sala on the spot, a place where their love could be nurtured. But on the day of the rendezvous the girl's father caught her leaving the house. Furious, he locked her in her room. The girl, her bedroom now a gilded cage, was filled with grief and hanged herself. Not knowing her fate, the woodcutter waited for her...and waited, trusting that she would come. The legend goes that he stayed there forever, always working to perfect the sala, always awaiting the arrival of his beloved.