Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke is a director, screenwriter, and producer born in 1970 in China and raised in Fenyang, Shanxi Province. After studying painting and writing his first novel in 1991, he turned to filmmaking. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1997. With The Young Experimental Film group, an independent production company he founded, he directed short films. His first feature film, Pickpocket (1997), won awards at several major international film festivals, although it would not be allowed to be screened in China, nor would his three subsequent films. In 1998, he received support from the Hubert Bals Fund for Platform, which was released in 2000. He quickly became a leading director on the international film scene, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Still Life (2006). In 2015, he was awarded the Golden Coach at Cannes for his entire body of work, and the following year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cairo International Film Festival. Jia Zhangke is at the forefront of Chinese independent cinema and is considered one of the leading directors of the country's sixth generation of filmmakers. In 2017, he co-founded the Pingyao International Film Festival with Marco Müller. In 2018, he released Ash Is Purest White, and in 2024, Caught by the Tides, his sixth film to be nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His films often blur the line between fiction and documentary and address themes such as globalization, urbanization, and the impact of rapid social changes on contemporary China.