director of the millennium

After the opening ceremony of the film festival, Wu Yuan met the last Chinese crew competing in the main competition unit, the "Dinosaur Egg" crew led by Wang Quan'an.

Wang Quan'an and Wang Xiaoshuai are among the best of the sixth generation of mainland directors. Because they have always made obscure art films, they are not well known to the general public. However, they are professional award winners internationally and have a close relationship with the Berlin Film Festival.

Wang Quan'an can be said to be Berlin's "own son".

"Tuya's Marriage" won the Golden Bear Award at the 50th Berlin Film Festival.

"Reunion" won the Silver Bear Award for Best Screenplay at the 60th Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Bear Award that year.

"White Deer Plain" was nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the 62nd Berlin Film Festival.

This time, "Dinosaur Egg" is his new work after 7 years, and it is also his comeback after the scandal of cheating on his wife with a ladybug. Whether he can win the award is of great significance to him.

However, Wu Yuan didn't think much of him.

In fact, extramarital affairs are not considered to be an extraordinary thing in the entertainment industry. After all, this industry is already very chaotic, and Wu Yuan is not interested in imposing his own moral standards on others.

The main reason is that Wang Quanan, a senior from Beijing Film Academy, is just so-so as a director.

As a professional director who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, the reason why he was favored by European film festivals was not because of how good his films were, but because he had always "sung the praises of suffering" in Europe.

This is also a common problem among the sixth generation of directors. They seem to have mastered the "code of wealth", which is to focus the camera on the love and suffering in poor areas of China in the 1970s and 1980s.

The more miserable the better, the more tragic the better; it would be best if the protagonist is poor and disabled, and his family and friends are as bad as they can be. Anyway, the more miserable the better.

As long as you make a movie like this, the European Film Festival will give you awards!

Wang Quanan is a typical sixth-generation Chinese director who kneels under this system.

His first solo film, "Eclipse", was a purely artistic film that focused on the inner emotional world.

But after this movie, Wang Quanan's path started to go wrong.

His second feature film, "The Awakening," tells the story of a rural woman who still has fantasies about the future after experiencing double setbacks in life and love. Listen, it sounds so beautiful.

But in fact, this movie takes the path of suffering, no matter how miserable it is. The family of the heroine Ermei forced her to marry the hero who was willing to pay off the family's debts. As a result, she was unwilling to run away, and when she arrived in the county town, she met a scumbag who cheated on several men at the same time.

Then she became disappointed with the county town and returned to the countryside to marry the male protagonist. As a result, she suffered all kinds of hardships after marriage, including heavy work, boring life and an alcoholic husband, and her son became seriously ill.

In short, the whole life is miserable and hopeless, and the movie exaggerates the "characteristics" of the western rural areas, such as backwardness, feudalism, the badness of the rural people, lack of ambition, and distorted personalities.

The film is promoted as a women's film focusing on rural China. It was filmed by a group of workers from all over the world who voluntarily followed Wang Quan'an into the most remote and impoverished northern rural areas of mainland China and overcame many difficulties.

Look, what a great statement this is. If you don’t know it, you’d better kowtow to these foreign workers who are full of “great love”.

However, this movie was shot in 2004.

If you don’t know, you might think it was in 1984! After “The Awakening”, Wang Quan’an found the “honor code” and made another film “Tuya’s Marriage” about a poor Mongolian woman Tuya who was forced to seek a husband due to the hardships of life, along with her disabled ex-husband Bater.

This film won the Golden Bear Award for Best Film at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival!

The next few films he made were all about the tragic and difficult love stories of lower-class Chinese women, including "White Deer Plain", which made him really famous in mainland China. At its core, it was still about social oppression.

Wu Yuan can understand why he wants to make one or two films. After all, artistic directors all love this subject matter.

But if he has been shooting on this subject since his debut, then he is really not worthy of being a director of the "Golden Bear" level.

The truly outstanding domestic directors who can win the top three awards in Europe, whether it is Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige or Wong Kar-wai, who doesn't constantly try new themes?

Wang Quanan, who only focuses on the tragic love stories of poor people, is definitely far inferior to these truly great directors in terms of artistic level. Even among the sixth generation directors of his generation, he is not considered outstanding.

Wang Xiaoshuai doesn’t just shoot love films!

This time, Wang Quanan brought "Dinosaur Egg", which is still a literary romance film, but the story is set in Mongolia. It tells the love story between a 35-year-old Mongolian woman and an 18-year-old policeman who were controlled by desire on the prairie.

Well, no breakthrough at all.

Considering that Wang Quanan was his direct senior, Wu Yuan simply greeted him in the backcourt, but he had no intention of having an in-depth chat with Wang Quanan to deepen their relationship.

There's nothing I can do. I really just can't like this senior brother.

If only he could make more attempts and breakthroughs in the field of film, Wu Yuan would ignore his cheating scandal and have a good chat with him about film art.

But Wang Quanan, who only knows how to shoot stories about the sufferings of love, really has nothing in common with Wu Yuan.

Not only him, Zhang Yimou and Wang Quanan also have nothing in common. After all, Zhang Yimou hasn't made this type of movie for a long time, and he hardly even watches it.

After a brief greeting, Wu Yuan and Zhang Yimou led the "Cai Wenji" crew to leave the backstage of the opening ceremony and went to visit Mr. Koslik, the chairman of this year's film festival.

After the final list of nominees for the 91st Academy Awards was announced some time ago, the public stopped discussing the merits of the films and instead satirized the lack of artistry in the Oscars, allowing themes such as feminism and LGBT to more deeply and fully permeate film creation.

The Berlin Film Festival is no exception. Founded in 1951, the Berlin International Film Festival was once somewhat unusual because it attached great importance to serious political and social reality themes.

Earlier, the festival's president, Koslik, stressed that "this year's festival continues this tradition in its selection of films, including films focusing on social livelihood and religious beliefs, as well as films involving women's human rights and refugee issues."

But judging from the subject matter, "Cai Wenji" undoubtedly does not have a very strong focus on the "politics and civil rights" issues that are of general concern to the international film industry today. If it wants to stand out, the evaluation of the jury members, especially the chairman of the jury, is particularly important.

Take last year's Cannes Film Festival as an example. The South Korean film "Burning" made a stunning debut and won the highest score in the history of the brochure. However, because the chairperson of the jury was Cate Blanchett, who was particularly concerned about the issue of women's equality, she favored the female-friendly "Shoplifters", and "Burning" ended up in a dismal state without winning any awards.

If Cai Wenji wants to avoid this embarrassing situation, she must build a good relationship with the judging panel! (End of this chapter)