Red Sorghum

Director: Yimou Zhang

1987 / 91min / 35mm

Gong Li’s acting debut was also the first feature from director and Li’s longtime-collaborator-to-be Zhang, a film that established both filmmaker and star as leading figures of Chinese Fifth Generation cinema when it took home the Golden Bear from the 38th annual Berlin International Film Festival. Based on the serially published novel of the same name by Nobel laureate Mo Yan, Red Sorghum takes place in a village in rural Shandong during the Second Sino-Japanese War, where Jiu’er (Li), a poor village girl condemned to an arranged marriage with the aged, leprosy-stricken owner of a sorghum wine distillery, finds solace in the arms of a dashing Jiang Wen while the world around them burns. “The sort of scenic, romantic, violent, symbolic melodrama that flowered in the early years of the cinema. There is a strength in the simplicity of this story, in the almost fairy-tale quality of its images and the shocking suddenness of its violence, that Hollywood in its sophistication has lost.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

35mm print courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Distributor: Xi'an Film Studio

Part of Empress Li