China’s film industry operated under a planned economy when Wang Xiaoshuai graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1989. Only a few studios, all state-owned, were allowed to make films.
Eager to start a career as filmmakers, Mr. Wang and a few friends scraped together about $6,000, borrowed a camera and convinced a company to give them free film. His directorial debut, The Days, about a desperate couple of artists, was screened at film festivals in Europe in 1994. The British Broadcasting Corporation ranked it as one of the 100 greatest films of all time.
But the Chinese film authorities were not happy. They banned Mr. Wang from working in the industry because he had screened “The Days” at foreign film festivals without their permission.
Mr. Wang, like many other artists in China, found ways around the ban and became one of the country’s most acclaimed filmmakers as restrictions eased. But last month, history repeated itself. When he screened his latest film, “Above the Dust,” at the Berlin International Film Festival, his company received a call from Chinese censors. He was ordered to withdraw it or face serious consequences.
“I didn’t expect that after 30 years, I would end up in the same place again,” he told me in an interview from London, where he currently lives.
“It’s a heavy price,” he said. “But it’s a price I have to face and accept.”
Creative talent in China’s film industry struggles under strict censorship. The stifling restrictions remind veterans like Mr. Wang of the harsher days when the Communist Party more tightly controlled speech and artistic expression.
The upheaval is in line with what has happened in many other creative industries as the party has tightened its grip on the hearts and minds of the public. Publishers have a hard time getting their books approved. Musicians and comedians have been banned for their lyrics and skits or sometimes for a single social media post. Even hip-hop music should reflect a positive energy, nothing sad or dark.
Literature and art must “serve the people and socialism,” China’s top leader Xi Jinping said in 2014. “Among the core socialist values, the most profound, fundamental and eternal is patriotism,” he said. “Works imbued with patriotic sentiment are more effective in rallying the Chinese people for unity and struggle.”
Mr. Xi’s dictation has since set the tone for Chinese cinema.
In 2018, oversight of the film industry was transferred from a state agency to the party’s publicity department, effectively making it an arm of the state’s propaganda apparatus.
“The choice is clear for many filmmakers,” said Michael Berry, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.. They can line up and make propaganda films, which means they could have a successful career commercially, he said. “Or you turn your back on the Chinese market, then become a dissident filmmaker and work internationally.”
Mr. Wang decided to screen “Above the Dust” in Berlin after receiving more than 50 censor directives in about 15 months, with no hope of getting the green light. The film is about the descendants of a landlord in the land reform era of the 1950s, a sensitive subject in China because millions of landlords were persecuted or murdered and their land confiscated by the state. Censors asked Mr. Wang to cut all references to the campaign.
Sometimes censors kill works for no apparent reason, it seems. Various lists of movies that have been killed or whose release has been postponed or withdrawn are circulating on the Chinese internet. The authorities never explained their reasoning. Sex and violence are obviously forbidden. Anything can be considered sensitive: crime, corruption, poverty, history, superstition or just sadness. Even propaganda films supported by the police and anti-corruption agencies could end up failing the test because crime and corruption reflect dark aspects of society.
“I always strive for creative freedom,” said Mr. Wang, 57. “But it’s impossible because of the circumstances.” He said he and his peers often talked about whether the films they considered making could pass censorship. “Thinking gets in your way all the time,” he said. “It’s very painful.”
Mr. Wang has always been a mischief maker in Chinese cinema, Mr. Berry said. However, the professor was surprised to find that in order to bypass censors, critics used garbled text to refer to “Above the Dust” on Chinese social media.
Born in Shanghai in 1966, Mr. Wang moved with his parents to the backwaters of southwest China’s Guizhou Province when he was 2 months old. It was part of Mao Zedong’s campaign to develop industrial and defense facilities inside the country and involved the relocation of millions of people. Mr. Wang’s family stayed in Guizhou until he was 13. The experience profoundly influenced his work. He has focused on the lives of these people because, he said, he wanted to show their hardships. Along the way, he said, he wanted to explain what made the Chinese who they are today.
Mr. Wang’s work was influenced by the French New Wave. He and directors such as Jia Zhangke and Lou Ye were known as leading figures in the “sixth generation movement” of Chinese cinema in the 1990s. They made underground films outside of the state film bureaucracy and received few official restrictions. When they were banned from working in the industry, they made independent films for overseas markets.
In 2003, the authorities invited Mr. Wang and others to talk about the future of Chinese cinema. It was the only time in living memory that filmmakers sat down with regulators on somewhat equal footing. The government hoped to make the industry more market-oriented and wanted their participation.
The following year, Mr. Wang received approval for his first film in China. The censorship process lasted only two months. His films never did well at the box office, but he continued, making one every two to three years. In 2019, he released ‘So Long, My Son’, about the impact of China’s one-child policy on two families. It won major awards at the Berlin Film Festival and the Golden Rooster Awards, the most prestigious in Chinese film.
Under Mr. Xi’s leadership, there has been a period of romance between China and Hollywood, culminating in the 2016 film “The Great Wall,” directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Matt Damon. But increasingly, “main theme films” promoting official sentiment dominate Chinese cinema. In 2022, Mr. Zhang made a film about a Chinese sniper who killed and wounded more than 200 Americans in the Korean War, a popular genre amid deteriorating US-China relations.
“We cannot turn Chinese cinema into an outlet exclusively for mainstream movies,” Jia Zhangke, the director who made such classics as “Xiao Wu” and “Platform,” said in 2022. It can take two or three years for experimental films made by younger directors to get screening licenses. “This uncertainty is causing great concern in the industry,” he added. “Investors are reluctant to invest in these films and our talent pool will face problems.”
“Any Chinese filmmaker knows how things have changed in recent years in terms of censorship and self-censorship,” said Mr. Wang, the director. “The atmosphere is increasingly depressed and cautious.”
That’s why he decided to defy the censors by showing his new film in Berlin — to push for change even if it means getting punished.
“It’s my duty as a director,” he said. “I’m only responsible for movies.”
