Directed by YAN Yu • Documentary • 2008 • 60 minutes

Yan Yu follows his groundbreaking documentary BEFORE THE FLOOD with this profile of the residents of Gongtan, a 1700-year-old village soon to be demolished by a hydroelectric dam project.

Gongtan, a historic village located on a tributary of ...

Directed by Wang Jiuliang • Documentary • 2011 • 72 minutes

Photographer Wang Jiu-liang travels to more than 500 landfills, fearlessly documenting Beijing's unholy cycle of consumption through poignant observational visits with the scavengers who live and work in the dumps.

While China's econom...

Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2016 • 152 minutes

The people in Wang Bing's BITTER MONEY lie in filthy, cramped apartments, stare at their phones for far too long, spend time on their balconies overlooking drab streets in which all the buildings look the same, and work long hours for litt...

Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2018 • 166 minutes

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as “ultra-rightists” in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the ...

Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2018 • 164 minutes

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as “ultra-rightists” in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the ...

Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2018 • 175 minutes

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as “ultra-rightists” in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the ...

Directed by Huang Weikai • Documentary • 2009 • 58 minutes

Huang Weikai's one-of-a-kind news documentary captures, with remarkable freedom, the anarchy, violence, and seething anxiety animating China's major cities today. As urbanization in China advances at a breakneck pace, Chinese cities teet...

Directed by HU Jie • Documentary • 2009 • 101 minutes

Condemned "Rightists," sentenced to 21 years of thought reform in the countryside, share harrowing first-person accounts of life in a Chinese labor camp.

In 1957, 200 teachers, students, and cadres were labeled as "Rightists" for voicing cri...

Directed by Huang Ji • Drama • With Xiao Pin-gao, Liu Xiao-lin, Yao Hong-gui, Yixiang Huang, Baiyu Yao • 2016 • 98 minutes

Huang Ji's brave personal film is one of the most auspicious debuts in recent Chinese cinema. Set in her home village in rural Hunan province, EGG AND STONE is a powerful au...

Directed by Hu Bo • Drama • With Yu Zhang, Yuchang Peng, Uvin Wang • 2018 • 230 minutes

Under the gloomy sky of a small town in northern China, different protagonists’ lives are intertwined in this furious tale of nihilistic rage. While protecting his friend from a dangerous school bully, 16-yea...

Directed by Yang Mingming • Documentary • 2012 • 43 minutes

Ah-Ming and Yueyue are two out-of-work film school grads living in Beijing who decide to turn the camera on each other and make a film about their lives.

On the surface, FEMALE DIRECTORS is the ultimate documentary for the age of overs...

Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2017 • 184 minutes

Often cited as one of the great documentary achievements, Wang Bing’s dazzling tour-de-force — a gripping monologue recounting five decades in the life of a once-ardent socialist in the new China — is a testament to the power of oral histo...

Directed by Zhao Dayong • Documentary • 2012 • 169 minutes

A remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its cultural past while its residents piece together their existence.

Zhiziluo is a town barely clinging to life. Tucked away in a rugged corner of Yunnan Province, Lisu and Nu...

Directed by Yang Mingming • Drama • With Yang Mingming, Nai An • 2018 • 116 minutes

Rising Chinese director Yang Mingming both directs and stars in GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY – a mother-daughter story that goes for the jugular.

Wu (Yang Mingming) and her mother (Nai An) live in a Beijing hutong – an ol...

Directed by J. P. Sniadecki • Documentary • 2014 • 83 minutes

Filmed over three years on China's railways, J. P. Sniadecki's masterful documentary traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, language and gesture. Scores of rail journey...

Directed by Pema Tseden • Drama • With Jinpa, Genden Phuntsok, Sonam Wangmo • 2019 • 87 minutes

This is a story of revenge and redemption.

On an isolated road passing through the vast barren plains of Tibet, a truck driver who has accidentally run over a sheep chances upon a young man who is hi...

Directed by Yi Cui • Documentary • 2016 • 13 minutes

LATE SUMMER captures a centuries-old Beijing theatre in its incarnation as a modern-day transient space.

Directed by Jill Li • Documentary • 2020 • 180 minutes

Embedding herself in the village of Wukan, southern China for several years starting in 2011, first time documentarian Jill Li witnessed an unprecedented experiment in local democracy. Corrupt officials had illegally sold villagers' land, bu...

Directed by Hu Bo • Drama • With Tieguang Gao, Xiaoqian Zhang, Yiji Zhao • 2017 • 16 minutes

Apocalypse. Two starving kids find a dead body in the ruins… Notes from Bela Tarr during 2017 FIRST training camp “They asked me to choose a ‘best student’ from these participants. But I don’t like the w...

Directed by Rita Andreetti • Documentary • 2019 • 78 minutes

In August 2014, the 11th Beijing Independant Film Festival was shut down after repeated threats from local authorities. The government wouldn't tolerate the screening of some 'sensitive' works, particularly a historical documentary cal...

Directed by Yi Cui • Documentary • 2016 • 79 minutes

OF SHADOWS is set in the unique landscape of China’s Loess Plateau, where the shadow play, as an enigmatic art form, has entertained people and deities for centuries. The film follows a lively and resilient group of shadow play performers as t...

Directed by WEN Hai and ZENG Jinyan • Documentary • 2020 • 100 minutes

A performance artist approaches a dais with a quiet formality, then proceeds to slowly and deliberately slice a series of cuts into her face with a razor. A doctoral student/filmmaker, under house arrest and constant surveill...

Directed by LIU Jiayin • Documentary • 2005 • 110 minutes

Daily life in an impossibly cramped Beijing apartment takes on epic proportions in this, intimate portrait, with unprecedented access, of a working-class Chinese family.

Boldly transforming documentary into fiction, Liu Jiayin cast her p...

Directed by Liu Jiayin • Drama • With Liu Jiayin, Huifen Jia, Zaiping Liu • 2012 • 132 minutes

Breaking new ground in cinematic art, Liu Jiayin's follow-up to her masterful debut OXHIDE turns a simple dinner into a profoundly intimate study of family relationships.

Building on the stunning visi...