“My wife is Indonesian-Japanese... and what happened is, she found me doing a documentary on pencak silat. And through the process of doing that documentary I had fallen in love with silat and learnt enough about the culture that I could comfortably live and work in Indonesia.”

Welsh film director, screenwriter, editor, and action choreographer

Gareth Huw Evans is a Welsh film director, screenwriter, editor, and action choreographer. He is best known for the Indonesian action crime films Merantau, The Raid, and The Raid 2, and for his work in television on Gangs of London. His films helped introduce pencak silat, the Indonesian martial art, to a wider international audience through tightly staged action and crime stories. He also co-created, co-wrote, co-directed, and executive produced Gangs of London, with Matt Flannery, drawing on the 2006 video game of the same name.