Zhang YimouFilmography

Curse of the Golden Flower

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye, Chen Jin

Synopsis: A dying love between two powerful people leads to deceit, infidelity, and conspiracy in this epic-scale historical drama from director Zhang Yimou. During the latter days of the Tang dynasty, the Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) returns home from the war with his son Prince Jai (Jay Chou) in tow. However Read More

The First Emperor

Crew: Producer, Stage Director

Actors: Plácido Domingo, Paul Groves, Elizabeth Futral

Synopsis: Famed tenor Placido Domingo headlines this December 2006 stage production of Tan Dun's unique opera The First Emperor, mounted by Raise the Red Lantern director Zhang Yimou. Dun composed the score and conducts; he also co-authored the libretto with Ha Jin, adapting both historical records by Sima Read More

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

Crew: Director, Screen Story

Actors: Ken Takakura, Kiichi Nakai, Shinobu Terashima, Li Jiamin, Qiu Lin, Jiang Wen

Synopsis: On the heels of such extravagant historical swordplay epics as Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Mainland Chinese director Zhang Yimou returns to the reins to tell this intimate tale of an aging father who attempts to remedy a longstanding rift with his grown son. Summoned to Tokyo by his Read More

House of Flying Daggers

Crew: Director, Producer, Screen Story

Actors: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau Tak-wah, Song Dandan

Synopsis: Chinese director Zhang Yimou fuses a martial arts action-drama with a tragic romance in this elegant period piece. In the year 859 A.D., as the Tang dynasty is beset by rebellion, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) are a pair of lawmen who have been given the task of ferreting out the Read More

Hero

Crew: Director, Producer, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Chen Daoming, Zhang Ziyi

Synopsis: Hero is two-time Academy Award nominee Zhang Yimou's directorial attempt at exploring the concept of a Chinese hero. During the peak of their Warring States period, China was divided into seven kingdoms all fighting for supremacy. Most determined to dominate China was the kingdom of Qin, whose Read More

Happy Times

Crew: Director

Actors: Ling Qibin, Zhao Benshan, Dong Jie, Li Xuejian, Dong Lifan

Synopsis: A man stretching the truth for his own sake soon begins doing the same for someone else, with increasingly complicated results, in this gentle comedy from China. Zhao (Zhao Benshan) is a guy in his early fifties who's out of work but still wants to marry his girlfriend (Dong Lifan). However, his Read More

The Road Home

Crew: Director

Actors: Sun Hong-Lei, Hao Zheng, Zhang Ziyi, Li Bin

Synopsis: Following on the heels of director Zhang Yimou's Not One Less (1999), which won the top prize at the 1999 Venice Film Festival, comes this sensitively-wrought portrait of a young woman's unshakable love. The film opens in the present, shot in gritty black and white, as businessman Luo Yusheng (Sun Read More

Not One Less

Crew: Director

Actors: Li Fanfan, Wei Minzhi, Zhang Huike, Tian Zhenda, Gao Enman, Sun Zhimei

Synopsis: In a village in China mired in poverty, Gao (Gao Enman) is the lone teacher in a school so threadbare he must ration chalk to make sure he has enough for the day. The destitution of the village is not limited to the school; some of the children sleep in the schoolhouse because they have nowhere Read More

Long cheng zheng yue

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Wu Chien-lien, You Yong, Huang Zhongqiu, Lam Wai, Gao Xiu

Synopsis: Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern) is the executive producer of this film directed by his past associate/co-director Yang Fengliang (Ju Dou). This period revenge drama, set during the early days of Republican China, begins when the wedding of Lanjuan (Taiwanese actress Wu Chienlien) is Read More

Keep Cool

Crew: Director

Actors: Jiang Wen, Li Baotian, Qu Ying, Ge You, Zhang Yimou

Synopsis: Utilizing a hand-held camera to create a frantic, off-balance effect that is radically different from the techniques with which he made his films best known to Western audiences Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou, Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou has made a fast-paced modern comedy that serves as an Read More

Shanghai Triad

Crew: Director

Actors: Gong Li, Li Baotian, Li Xuejian, Sun Chun, Wang Xiaoxiao, Jiang Baoying

Synopsis: Country boy Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao) is brought to 1930s Shanghai by his uncle who wants the boy to become a member of the powerful gang ruled by manipulative Tang (Li Baotian). In fact, Shuisheng will serve Tang's capricious mistress Bijou (Gong Li), a nightclub singer whom the boss proclaimed Read More

Lumière and Company

Synopsis: In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Lumière brothers' first films, filmmakers Sarah Moon and Philippe Poulet challenged 39 renowned international directors to each complete a 52-second film using the original Cinematographe camera under the conditions endured by the brothers. The result Read More

A Soul Haunted by Painting

Crew: Supervising Director

Actors: Gong Li, Derek Yee, Zhang Qiongzi, Da Shichang

Synopsis: The rise of a Chinese painter Pan Yuliang (1899-1977) as she went from prostitute to famed artist in Paris is the focus of this Chinese biography. The film opens with then 12-year old Pan working in a brothel in a small rural town. She is soon hired to become a prostitute after the head hooker Read More

The Great Conqueror's Concubine

Crew: Producer

Actors: Ray Lui, Gong Li, Zhang Fengyi, Lau Seung

Synopsis: The true story of a major turning point in ancient Chinese history is presented in this epic drama covering the destruction of the Qin Dynasty in the late third century B.C. Most specifically the film focuses upon the battle between the Qin and Chu forces in the first half, and in the second it Read More

To Live

Crew: Director

Actors: Ge You, Gong Li, Niu Ben, Guo Tao, Jiang Wu

Synopsis: Zhang Yimou, often regarded as China's leading contemporary filmmaker, directed this drama chronicling the ebb and flow of one family's fortunes, set against the backdrop of China's tumultuous history between the 1940s and the 1970s. Fugui (Ge You) is the father of a once-wealthy family whose Read More

Raise the Red Lantern

Crew: Director

Actors: Gong Li, He Caifei, Ma Jingwu, Cao Cuifeng, Jin Shuyuan, Kong Lin

Synopsis: The phenomenal success and international acclaim of Raise the Red Lantern, cemented Zhang Yimou's status as a leading figure in world cinema and reaffirmed the vibrancy of Chinese cinema. Though the film was the topic of great political controversy in China upon its release, it received armfuls Read More

The Story of Qiu Ju

Crew: Director

Actors: Gong Li, Ge Zhijun, Liu Peiqi

Synopsis: With The Story of Qiu Ju, internationally acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou shifts his attention from powerful historical dramas (Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou) to contemporary life. Gong Li plays the titular heroine, an average woman in a rural village whose life is unexceptional until Read More

Ju Dou

Crew: Director

Actors: Gong Li, Li Baotian, Li Wei, Zhang Yi, Zheng Jian

Synopsis: A dark, sensual, and visually sumptuous drama, Ju Dou centers on the title character, the third wife of a wealthy silk dyer in 1920s China. Forced into marriage by poverty, Ju Dou is repeatedly mistreated and cruelly disciplined by her husband, Jin-shan, for failing to bear him an heir. Her Read More

The Terracotta Warrior

Actors: Gong Li, Zhang Yimou

Synopsis: Director Zhang Yimou and his frequent onscreen muse Gong Li star in this affable romantic fantasy. Mong Tienfong (Zhang) is a Qin dynasty server who has the misfortune to fall in love with beautiful imperial concubine Snow (Li). For their illicit affair, Snow is forced to commit suicide and Mong Read More

Red Sorghum

Crew: Director

Actors: Gong Li, Jiu Ji

Synopsis: Red Sorghum was the first directorial effort of controversial Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. The director's favorite leading lady Gong Li plays a young woman of the 1920s whose family sells her into marriage with a wealthy winemaker. At first a loveless union, the relationship blossoms into one of Read More

Codename Cougar

Crew: Director

Actors: Ge You, Gong Li

Synopsis: In this crime/political thriller, on a routine flight in September from Taipei, Taiwan to Seoul, Korea, a wealthy businessman's private airplane is hijacked by some crackpots claiming to be the Taiwan Revolutionary Army Front, and is forced to land on mainland China. Chinese authorities are at a Read More

The Big Parade

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Wang Xueqi, Sun Chun

Synopsis: A battle-toughened Chinese drill sergeant is assigned to whip a ragtag group of raw recruits into a perfect marching unit in this sophomore feature film by noted filmmaker Chen Kaige whose best-known film was the highly acclaimed Yellow Earth. The soldiers in this film are getting ready to Read More

Old Well

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Zhang Yimou, Lu Liping

Synopsis: Sun Wangquan (Zhang Yimou) returns to his remote and primitive mountain village after studying for years in the city in this tedious drama. He hopes to raise the standard of living for the desert wasteland with simple technology that can produce a steady water supply. Sun is coveted by two women. Read More

Yellow Earth

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Xue Bai, Wang Xueqi, Tan Tuo, Liu Qiang

Synopsis: Young Red Army soldier Gu Qing is sent to the northern Shaanxi region of China to learn local folk songs in 1939. He stays with a poor grumpy widower, along with his son Hanhan and his precocious teenage daughter Cuiqiao. The three are initially suspicious of the stranger, but they warm to him Read More

One And Eight

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Lu Xiaoyan

Synopsis: It is 1939, and the Red Army is deeply engaged in the war against the Japanese, which for the communist Chinese has been going on for many years. Though they are ostensibly allies, the Kuomintang armies under Chiang Kai-shek have done very little to oppose the invaders, so the battle is theirs. In Read More