Red Sorghum

A young girl is wed to an older man who mysteriously disappears. As his widow, she takes over his still for making liquor, and accepts a man who has previously raped her, as her husband. Then one day, the Japanese army enters the province where they live. Red Sorghum is a burlesque, tragic, lyric and not least colourful depiction of dramatic incidents in Chinese history, but also of everyday village life. Zhang Yimou won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale for this his first feature film, which made him a leading figure of a new generation of filmmakers invigorated by their new-won artistic freedoms.

Zhang Yimou (b. 1950) worked in the countryside and later in a factory during the Cultural Revolution in China. He was then accepted into the newly opened Beijing Film Academy, and together with the likes of Chen Kaige and Jinzhan Zhang he is part of the “fifth generation” of Chinese filmmakers. Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and House of Flying Daggers (2004) are among his most known works.