Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke took four true stories straight from the news, about a miner, a man with a gun, a spa receptionist and a young assembly-line worker, and won the screenplay award at Cannes in 2013. China gave the film a release date, but the censors made sure that day never came. — For years Dahai has been telling anyone in Shanxi province who will listen that the village bosses sold off the mine and pocketed the money. Across three other Chinese provinces, three other people reach much the same conclusion: a worker heading home for the New Year, a spa receptionist and a young man drifting from factory to factory. Four people in four provinces, all living inside the same economic giant. — Best Screenplay | Cannes Film Festival | 2013

Jia Zhangke owed Robert Bresson more than a title, and he shot his debut underground, completely outside the Chinese system. His hero is a pickpocket who watches all his friends get on with their lives and keeps on stealing anyway. — In the Fenyang of 1997, Xiao Wu still makes his living picking pockets, while his old partners have quit the street for business and not one of them has taken him along. He fills his lonely evenings with a hostess from a karaoke bar. Meanwhile the police are waging a campaign against crime across town, and it’s getting harder for a man like him to go unseen. — Wolfgang Staudte Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1998 Netpac Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1998

Set to the Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West”, Jia Zhangke’s film follows globalisation as it reshapes China decade by decade. He shot the 1999 chapter on a camera from that year, and as the frame widens, so does the distance between the characters, until by 2025 a father and son have no language in common. — Tao is dancing in the town square at Chinese New Year in 1999, and two men want to marry her: Liangzi, who works down the mine, and Zhang, who has just bought it. She picks one of them, and the film catches up with all three in 2014 and again in 2025, when her son is growing up in Australia. — Palme de Whiskers Award | Cannes Film Festival | 2015 Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2015 Audience Award | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2015