My China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Must Watch

A 17 year old boy from a village in the Sechuan province leaves for the big city looking for his father, who left 6 years before and has not been heard of since. The fact that his mother still receives money his father does nothing to tame his anger. He his not looking for a warm reunion, it is unconcealed revenge that drives him. Totally lost, he roams the big city with his basket of ducks on his back...

Four people in a Chinese city live through a complicated day as their lives intersect.

Economic unrest roils central China's Shaanxi Province: local factories are merging, thugs threaten managers, personnel records get lost, and workers are without protections such as health insurance. The police and much of society are surly. Xiao Jian, a mild young man whose father is ill, works in the family street stall doing pressing and tailoring. A laundered police-officer's shirt goes uncollected, and Xiao Jian puts it on: it opens doors. Wearing it, he chats up a clerk, Zheng Shasha, and takes her out. He extracts fines from drivers who violate traffic laws. In these tough times, he's not the only one with two identities. How long can he sustain it?

Wu Hongyan is a young woman working as a prison guard during executions of female convicts. She feels lonely after her husband died, and she takes a night train to another city to visit a dating service. After a series of unsuccessful dates, she meets Li Jun. It quickly becomes obvious that he is hiding a secret: he is the widower of one of the female convicts of which Wu Hongyan assisted in the execution. Li Jun is torn apart by his feelings, as he is both attracted to Wu Hongyan, and having a desire for revenge for his executed wife.

A-Lan, a young gay writer, being attracted to a young policeman named Xiao Shi, manages to have himself arrested and interrogated for a whole night. Xiao Shi's attitude shifts from revulsion to fascination and, finally, to attraction.

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

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

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.

A female Communist cadre is overcome by regret after she breaks up with her former lover attacked as a Rightist during the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Decades later, she now has the chance to rehabilitate him.

Two party members escort a poet and political prisoner of the Cultural Revolution on a ship to Wuhan. They sleep in a cabin with other victims of the era, who sympathize deeply with the poet.

A blind man's master told him that after he has broken 1000 strings on his Banjo, he can open the Banjo to get a script for his eyes. After 60 years he broke the 1000th string...

A father and son argue over whether they should kill a snow leopard that broke into their home and killed 9 sheep.

Working as a secretary for a legal office, Xiaofen records clients detailing the sordid aspects of their lives: divorce cases, medical malpractice suits, financial corruption and old-fashioned personal revenge. Xiaofen starts to question her own relationship with her boyfriend (Deng Gang), fresh out of prison and looking to get into trouble again with his gambling habit. While Xiaofen deals with the overwhelming social malaise surrounding her, rumors spread of a disaster at the local chemical plant, threatening to poison the entire city.

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.

The Days is Wang Xiaoshuai's 1993 debut. Filmed in black-and-white, The Days follows the life of two married artists who have graduated from the Beijing Art Institute.

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.

A rock musician looks for his girl-friend who left while pregnant, trying to decide whether to keep the baby.

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

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

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.

Xiao Dou "Feng Yuanzheng" is a shy and naive mail worker. When a coworker is fired for reading people's correspondences he takes over the same mail route. He soon finds himself in the same curiosity, eventually developing an obsession.

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.

Two unemployed Chinese teenagers have trouble resisting the temptations of the Western world.

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.

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."