WANG XIAOSHUAI, Writer / Director

Wang Xiaoshuai graduated from the Beijing Film Academy and wrote and directed his first feature The Days (1993) when he was 27. Acclaimed at first, the film is soon after black listed and its distribution banned in China. The film depicted the last days of a deteriorating relationship between two artists in Beijing. Two years later, he directed Frozen (1995) under the pseudonym Wu Ming (Without a name); the film got selected at many International festivals and was awarded with Special Mention of the jury in Rotterdam in 1995. The film offers a look at the Beijing avant-garde art world, where a young artist organizes a set of performances culminating in his own suicide as the final act.

The same year, he directed A Vietnamese Girl for the Beijing Film Studio. The film was refused by the censorship committee and it took 3 years of re-editing and a change of title (So Close to Paradise) to be finally approved for a (limited) screening in China. So Close To Paradise tells the story of two rural migrants, a naive young boy and a small-time con man, trying to make ends meet living in the city of Wuhan, and falling in love with a female bar singer they abducted. In 1998, it was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. His fifth feature, Beijing Bicycle, won the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival and its two leading male actors received the Best Young Actor Prize. In 2003 Drifters was screened in Un Certain Regard at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, his following film, Shanghai Dreams, was selected for competition in the 2005 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Jury Prize. In 2008, In Love We Trust, won the Silver Bear for the best screenplay in Berlin. In 2010, Chongqing Blues was selected in competition at Cannes Film Festival. The film received the Chinese Director Association award for Best Director.