Time Out Shanghai's 100 Best Mainland Chinese Films

Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

A lonely housewife finds her monotonous life altered when her childhood sweetheart returns to town.

Villagers in World War II China are unsure what to do with the two enemy prisoners who have been left in their care.

Beijing, 1970s. Now that the CR has driven most adults to the provinces, 14-year-old Monkey and his pals have free reign over the city. They hang around, get up to no good, and discover that unsolvable mystery referred to as "girls."

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

The impact of the decline of heavy industry on workers and their families in the Tiexi district of Shenyang, China, at the turn of the 21st century, documented unflinchingly by a fly-on-the-wall camera.

A communist soldier travels to Shanbei to collect folk songs for propaganda while visiting a poor peasant family, giving hope to the teenage daughter in escaping an arranged marriage.

After Fugui and Jiazhen lose their personal fortunes, they raise a family and survive difficult cultural changes during 1940s to 1970s China.

Street walker by night, devoted mother by day, a woman fights to get her young son an education amid criminal and social injustice in China.

In old Shanghai, two sisters, a prostitute and a singer, tried to escape from the local scoundrels with the help of a trumpet player and a newspaper seller.

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

When a leprous winery owner in 1930s China dies a few days after his arranged marriage, his young widow is forced to run the winery to make a living while contending with bandits, her drunkard lover, and the invading Japanese army.

China in the 1920s. After her father's death, Songlian is forced to marry the wealthy Master Chen. With three wives already, each living in a separate house, there is fierce competition for his attention and the privileges that are gained.

The lives of a Beijing family throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as they experience the impact of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

Two coal miners and conmen looking for their next murder victim decide on a naïve country boy desperately looking for a job.

A theatre troupe from rural Fenyang struggles under the decline of communism and rise of popular culture in China in the 1980s.

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover.

Jiang Wen stars in his third directorial work that boasts a stellar cast including Joan Chen, Anthony Wong and Jaycee Chan. A polyptych of interconnected stories in different time-zones, shifting between a Yunnan village, a campus, and the Gobi Desert.

Love, humiliation, and politics play out in a distant village of China during the Cultural Revolution.

Yu Hong leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student riots from 1989 then ensue and take a toll on their lives.

In rural China, the young bride of a tyrannical owner of a silk-dyeing business finds temporary solace in the arms of her husband's nephew, but problems arise when she becomes pregnant.

A semi-literate who was deprived of schooling during the Cultural Revolution, Li Huiquan, is released from labor camp. But his attempts to make good are continually thwarted. His street stall selling clothes puts him on the fringe of the black market, and he soon gets lured back into his old neighbourhood gangs. His disenchanted comrades include a nightclub chanteuse as well as an escaped convict.

Chronicles the fortunes of two actresses in pre-revolutionary China, who are separated by money and politics.

Sun Wukong, the King of the Monkeys, sets off on his first adventure to gain a worthy weapon. This earns the attention of the Jade Emperor of Heaven.

A Tibetan man struggles to provide for his family.