Wang Bing
Wang Bing is a leading light of contemporary international documentary filmmaking. Acclaimed by critics and recognized as one of the most important Chinese artists and filmmakers of his time, his work has garnered awards and international praise at film festivals including the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals. Born in Shaanxi province in central China in 1967, Wang studied photography at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art and cinematography at Beijing Film Academy. He began his career as an independent filmmaker in 1999. Retrospectives of his work have been presented at institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique.
His two newest films, YOUTH (SPRING) and MAN IN BLACK screened at both Cannes and the New York Film Festival in 2023.
Image credit: Courtesy Icarus Films and Asian Shadows International Sales Ltd.
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Bitter Money
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...
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Dead Souls - Part I
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 ...
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Dead Souls - Part II
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 ...
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Dead Souls - Part III
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 ...
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Fengming, a Chinese Memoir
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...
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Ta'ang
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2016 • 147 minutes
Director Wang Bing brings his careful eye to the mountainous border-region of northeastern Myanmar in Ta’ang, a powerful and revealing observational documentary that follows members of the Ta’ang minority as they flee to China to escape an...
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Three Sisters
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2012 • 153 minutes
One of his generation's most important documentary filmmakers, director Wang Bing is at the height of his powers in THREE SISTERS. The film introduces viewers to 10-year-old YingYing, 6-year-old Zhenzhen and 4-year-old Fenfen, who live alo...
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'Til Madness Do Us Part
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2013 • 238 minutes
Within the gates of an isolated mental institution in in southwest China's Yunnan province, patients are confined to one single floor of a building. Once locked in, with little contact from the outside world, anything goes.
The facility's...
