Ranked: the 10 best films of Chinese director Zhang Yimou, from One Second and Hero to Raise the Red Lantern and Red Sorghum

Zhang Yimou introduced Zhang Ziyi to the world, made Gong Li his muse, and in five decades has directed art-house films, martial arts epics and quirky comedies

We rank Zhang’s top 10 films, from 1988’s Red Sorghum to 2019’s One Second, the latter pulled from screening for two years by Chinese censors

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Gong Li in a still from Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s 1991 production “Raise the Red Lantern”. We rank Zhang’s 10 best films from a career that has spanned five decades. Photo: Orion Classics

James Marsh

Published: 11:15am, 19 Oct 2023Updated: 12:24pm, 19 Oct 2023

It is shaping up to be quite the year for Zhang Yimou, a leading light of China’s fifth generation of filmmakers.

Zhang began 2023 with Full River Red, a historical murder mystery starring Jackson Yee and Shen Tang, set at the beginning of the Song dynasty (960-1279). Released during the Lunar New Year holiday, the film proved a box-office behemoth, raking in more than US$670 million to become the year’s biggest domestic hit to date.

Just eight months later, Zhang, who turns 72 in November, has released a second film, Under the Light.

A contemporary thriller championing the efforts of mainland Chinese authorities to combat corruption and abuse of power among officials and the super-rich, the film opened just in time for the “golden week” national holiday, and has taken more than US$160 million in its first two weeks.

Zhang Guoli in a still from “Under the Light”.

With more than 20 feature films to his name in a career spanning five decades, Zhang has displayed incredible longevity.

He burst onto the scene with a series of art-house dramas starring long-time muse Gong Li that showed aspects of life in China during the first half of the 20th century. His films earned widespread international acclaim, but many of them enraged the censors at home with their thinly veiled critiques of contemporary China.