The most ambitious film of the first decade of Zhang Yimou’s career, this sweeping adaptation of Yu Hua’s acclaimed novel is also a deeply personal reckoning with his own family history. Better known at the time for his comic roles, Ge You gives a sensational (and Cannes award-winning) performance as Xu Fugui, son of a wealthy family who is caught in the turmoil of the Chinese Civil War and then the Cultural Revolution. Together with his wife Jiazhen (Gong Li), Fugui is thrown from disaster to triumph and back by the chance fates of a society in continual collapse and repair. Few films have captured the frightening speed and energies of revolutionary times like To Live, and fewer still have brought Twentieth Century history alive so vibrantly and with such heartbreaking emotional impact. One of the great films of the 1990s returns to the London for these special screenings.  

Our Screening on 2 August was introduced by Tony Rayns.

Cast:
Ge You, Gong Li