Millennium director

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

Wang Quan'an and Wang Xiaoshuai are the best of the sixth generation of directors in the mainland. Because they have always only made obscure art films, they are not well known by the general public, but they are international award-winning professionals, and they have a close relationship with the Berlin Film Festival.

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

"Tuya's Wedding" 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 of the same 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 since the scandal of cheating on his wife and being a ladybug. Whether he can win the award is of great significance to him.

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

In the entertainment industry, cheating on one's wife is not considered an outrageous thing. After all, this industry is already very chaotic, and Wu Yuan is not interested in imposing his moral standards on others.

The main problem is that Wang Quan'an, a senior from Beijing Film Academy, is just a so-so director.

As a professional director from Beijing Film Academy, the reason why he is favored by European film festivals is not because of how well he made his movies, but because he has been "singing praises to suffering" in Europe.

This is also a common problem among the sixth generation of directors. They seem to have mastered the "wealth code", 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 is best if the protagonist is poor and disabled, and the family and friends are as bad as possible. Anyway, it's as miserable as possible.

As long as such a movie is made, the European Film Festival will give awards!

Wang Quan'an is a typical sixth generation Chinese director who kneels under this system.

When he debuted, his first personal film "Lunar Eclipse" was still a pure art film, but the camera focused on the inner emotional world.

But after this movie, Wang Quan'an's path began to be 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 route of suffering. The family of the heroine Ermei forced her to marry the hero who was willing to pay back the family's debts. As a result, she was unwilling to run away. When she arrived in the county town, she met a scumbag who cheated on several men at the same time.

Then she was disappointed with the county town and returned to the countryside to marry the hero. As a result, after marriage, heavy labor, boring life and alcoholic husband all kinds of suffering came, and her son was seriously ill.

In short, the whole life is miserable and desperate, and then the movie exaggerates the backwardness, feudalism, badness of rural people, lack of ambition, and distorted personality of the western rural areas.

The external propaganda of this movie is that this is a female film focusing on the theme of Chinese rural areas. A group of workers from all over the world voluntarily followed Wang Quan'an to the most remote and poor northern rural areas in the mainland of China and overcame many difficulties to complete the filming.

Look, this is such a good statement. Those who don't know should give a compliment to these foreign workers who are full of "great love".

However, this movie was shot in 2004.

Those who don't know would think it was in 1984!

After "The Awakening", Wang Quan'an found the "honor code" and shot another movie "Tuya's Marriage" about a poor Mongolian woman Tuya who was forced to seek marriage with her disabled ex-husband Bater due to the hardships of life.

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

The few movies he shot afterwards were all about the tragic and difficult love stories of Chinese women at the bottom of society, including the movie "White Deer Plain" that made him really famous in mainland China. At its core, it was still about social oppression.

Wu Yuan could understand shooting one or two movies, after all, directors who play art all love this subject.

But if he has been shooting this subject since his debut, he really doesn't deserve a director of the "Golden Bear" level.

The truly excellent domestic directors who can win the top three European awards, whether it is Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige or Wong Kar-wai, who is not constantly trying new themes?

Wang Quanan, who only captures the tragic love of the poor people, is definitely far behind these truly great directors in terms of artistic level. Even among the sixth-generation directors of his generation, he is not considered excellent.

Wang Xiaoshuai does not only shoot love!

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

Well, there is no breakthrough.

Considering that Wang Quanan is his direct senior brother, Wu Yuan still greeted him briefly in the backstage, but he did not have any idea of ​​having a deep chat with Wang Quanan to deepen the relationship.

There is no way, I really don’t like this senior brother.

If he could make more attempts and breakthroughs in the film industry, 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 love stories, has nothing in common with Wu Yuan.

Not only him, Zhang Yimou and Wang Quanan also had no common topics. After all, Zhang Yimou had not made this type of movie for a long time, and he even rarely watched it.

After a simple greeting, Wu Yuan and Zhang Yimou took 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 Oscars was announced some time ago, the public no longer discussed the quality of the film, but satirized the lack of artistry in the Oscars, allowing themes such as feminism and LGBT to penetrate film creation more deeply and comprehensively.

The Berlin Film Festival is also no exception. Founded in 1951, the Berlin International Film Festival once seemed a bit different because it attached great importance to serious political and social reality themes.

Earlier, the president of the film festival, Koslik, emphasized that "this year's film festival still continues this tradition in the selection of films. There are films focusing on social livelihood and religious beliefs, as well as content involving women's human rights and refugee topics."

From the perspective of subject matter, "Cai Wenji" is undoubtedly not very strong. The "political and civil rights" issues that are generally concerned by the international film industry today, if you want 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 Korean film "Burning" made a big splash and won the highest score in the history of the program book. However, because the chairman of the jury was Cate Blanchett, who was particularly concerned about the issue of women's equality, she preferred the female-friendly "Shoplifters". "Burning" ended miserably and got nothing.

If "Cai Wenji" wants to avoid this embarrassing situation, it must have a good relationship with the jury! (End of this chapter)