1. Before the Flood (淹没)
Before the Flood is a study of the final weeks of a dying city, as thousand-year-old Fengjie on the Yangtze River is reduced to rubble and its inhabitants uprooted to make way for the new Three Gorges Dam that will flood the entire valley.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
2. Bazaar Jumpers (跑酷少年)
Two Uigur brothers and a friend are in love with parkour, a kind of extreme sport. Regardless of opposition from their worried mothers, the boys train themselves to be the best in an upcoming parkour event in Beijing while managing to iron out additional difficulties. They lose the game, but eventually they learn much more about their true selves.
3. All's Right With The World (歌舞昇平)
The film explores the hidden face of poverty in one of the world's most affluent and capitalistic cities. Directed by CHEUNG King Wai , the film follows five Hong Kong families of different backgrounds that receive government subsidies. How do the poor get by in a glossy city that flaunts conspicuous consumption and hides poverty in cavernous public housing estates? All's Right With The World shares the different stories of these low-income families, their daily living conditions, and their ways of celebrating Chinese New Year.
4. The Rocking Sky (冲天)
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of WWII, this documentary film describes the eight years of dauntless air-force fighting of the republic of China during the Anti-Japanese War, with only 300 combat-capable aircraft from China while Japan had over 2000.
It has an average vote of 8.7 on TMDB.
5. Trashy Treasure (垃圾人)
The term "garbage" is relative, but most people's definition of garbage is absolute and rigid, and the definition of a person like "garbage man" is also relative. Compared to the ostrich that disappears when humans avoid garbage and not see psychological. With a lively and lovely tone, the film brings out the special views of how the two protagonists look at trash when they walk between the cities, and then connects the delicate relationship between their love for trash and their families.
6. The Road (大路朝天)
A highway is waiting to go through a quiet village in Hunan, a province in central China where Mao was from. Due to the high cost of construction, construction companies and migrant workers who live on road work rush to here like the tide. In the following four years, they root in this strange place for interests, paying sweat and blood, even their lives. With their arrival, local village and peasants are forced to change their lives. Many hidden interest lines and hidden rules about road construction of the nation are unveiled, together with the shocking truth and emerging secrets.
It has an average vote of 8.5 on TMDB.
7. Falling From the Sky (天降)
The little-known Hunan Suining County is an ordinary but full of magical places. As the theoretical point of the rocket wreckage launched by the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, it has greeted the rocket wreckage from the sky dozens of times in the past 20 years since 1990. This mysterious and dangerous “out-of-town visitor” broke the poor and peaceful life of the 160,000 locals in the jurisdiction. 2008 is China's "Olympic Year" and "Aerospace Year." The people of Suining, like the people of the whole country, are looking forward to the Olympics to pay attention to the Olympics and are proud of the growing strength of the comprehensive national strength including aerospace strength. They also have to bear the fate of falling from the sky.
It has an average vote of 8.8 on TMDB.
8. Along the Railway (铁路沿线)
This important, patient documentary follows a year in the life of the sidings dwellers who eke out a living, begging, foraging, stealing and sleeping rough near the Baoji railway station in Shaanxi.
It has an average vote of 7.2 on TMDB.
9. Outside (外面)
Wang Wo’s experimental documentary takes the direct cinema approach to the realm of avantgardism, immersing the viewer in a non-narrative, highly sensory experience of urban China in its visual and aural splendor.
It has an average vote of 4.8 on TMDB.
10. The Shoe Shiner's Journey (昨日狂想曲)
(昨日狂想曲)
11. The Two Shovels (两把铁锹)
(两把铁锹)
12. First Vote
A soon-to-be first-time voter, the filmmaker’s thought-provoking journey into the Rust Belt and South captures four Asian American voters’ ardent first time grassroots political participation ignited by the 2016 rise of “Chinese Americans for Trump.” FIRST VOTE is a character driven cinema verité style film chronicling the democratic participation of four Asian American voters from 2016 through the 2018 midterm elections.
13. Ninth Uncle (九叔)
Nicknamed "Mayor of the Night Market", Ninth Uncle has been a temporary worker managing the night market for over 30 years. Despite of his success in the night market, his family life appears quite the opposite. Almost 70 years old now, he continues his life in the night market. As the night falls every evening, Zhong Shan Road and its hundred years of history are now facing reconstruction and the night market full of yummy food venders is soon to be gone. Ninth Uncle helplessly watches the empire he worked his whole life for slowly fall apart.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
14. The Third Uncle (三大爷)
Li is over 70 years old, he sits in front of his window in the afternoon every day and smokes the cigarette to pass the time. The sound of water drops in the kitchen, two pigeons are roosting on roof of the opposite building, and the sunshine comes into the room, which make Li feel alive. His emotions usually could be fluctuated with the plot of the TV programmes, because he even could find out his own fitful memories from it. One was is the whole family, another one also is the whole family. During worshipping of the ancestors, he listened to his mother's arrangements and felt sincere concern from his brother. However, happy time was so short. After he returned to his rental place, the only thing that he can do is to look at the dream which was outlined in the New Year's Gala, and which gradually away from his dream. Everything just was the same as the past in this new year, he was still feel so lonely.
15. The Son (儿子)
“If there is any chance, I will let him live well No matter where he is.” The old lady cried and said that when I was visited her and her husband one year ago. Her heartfelt wishes are my motivation, I know that I am going to create this documentary work - the son.
16. THE LONGWANG CHRONICLES: A YEAR OF LIFES IN A CHINESE VILLAGE (乡村档案：龙王村2006影像文件)
Unusually popular religions and extreme secular beliefs, unconstrained power and no authoritarian society, people work hard on the land and live thrifty but do not believe in the meaning of life at all. This is Longwang Village, an empty old farming society, the most essential reality of an ordinary western village. The film does not have a perpetual plot. The images are presented with the changing of the four seasons. There is no great joy or great sadness. Everything is recorded, and no results are produced. Strictly speaking, this is actually just a rural video file, a running account of ordinary western villages without all rhetoric.
17. On the Road (路上)
Only a few days before the Spring Festival of 2008, several truck drivers set off from Nantong, Jiangsu Province, to Guizhou province to deliver goods. But what they didn't expect was that they ran into a big snowstorm not long after their departure. What would these drivers do after they got caught up in a snowstorm and coudn't do nothing about it but wait? How would they react to this unexpected halt? And what would happen to this convoy?
18. Silent Landscape (沉默的风景)
This is a film about the unison between the four seasons of life and the four seasons of the year, intertwined with the geospatial and temporal dimensions of a small town named Tongchuan situated on the northwest of the Loess Plateau.
19. Koudelka (寇德卡)
This is a documentary filmed in a subjective perspective. Without any commentary, the film records, in the switches and transitions of the faces, the gamut and track of emotions and vision of the author in enjoying the photographs by Koudelka—from the scenes of life in “Gypsies”, to the conflicts in “Invasion”, further to the still images in “Exiles”, and finally focused on desolately dignified “Chaos”. The four chapters of the film echo the four photo albums of Koudelka. With the indoor CD player playing the music by Shostakovich, the invasion of the landscape without the windows, intermingled with the background noise, complicates the ambient circumstances of the film and renders an immediate sense of urgency and relevance.
20. Lost in the Mountain (空山軼)
The film is director Gao Zipeng’s first fiction film which takes three years to complete. It premieres on March 27, 2001 in UCCA and stars the poet A Jian, Xiao Zhao and the writer Gou Zi. The film is based on a true crime of disappearance. It creates an atmosphere of what Ma Zhiyuan, a celebrated poet and playwright of Yuan Dynasty, portrays in his famous poem “Autumn Thoughts”: Over old trees wreathed with rotten vines fly evening crows/ Under a small bridge near a cottage a stream flows/ On ancient road in the west wind a lean horse goes/ Westward declines the sun/ Far, far from home is the heartbroken one.
It has an average vote of 4 on TMDB.
