Chinese Portrait

Name: Chinese Portrait
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2018-10-06
Rating: 6.9

Documentary1h 19m

🍅90%

🍅

90%

Tomatometer

🍿

40%

Popcornmeter

6.9

TMDB

Storyline

Shot over the course of ten years on both film and video, the film consists of a series of carefully composed tableaux of people and environments. Pedestrians shuffle across a bustling Beijing street, steelworkers linger outside a deserted factory, tourists laugh and scamper across a crowded beach, worshippers kneel to pray in a remote village. With a painterly eye for composition, Wang captures China as he sees it, calling to a temporary halt a land in a constant state of change.

Trailers

Details

DirectorWang Xiaoshuai

ReleasedOct 6, 2018

StatusReleased

Original languageChinese

Budget

Not disclosed

Revenue

Not disclosed

Parental guideNot rated

Studios

WXS ProductionsDongchun Films (Beijing) Co.Chinese Shadows

Reviews

5 reviews · 4 critics

3 fresh · 1 rotten

G. Allen Johnson

RTSan Francisco ChronicleJan 30, 2020

"Chinese Portrait" is a great art installation, but a thoroughly unsatisfying film.

Jonathan Romney

RTFilm Comment MagazineDec 20, 2019

The first great film of this year, arguably, was Wang Xiaoshuai's three-hour So Long, My Son...although it is only 80 minutes long, his Chinese Portrait is equally expansive, although in a telegraphic, fragmented manner.

Kevin Crust

RTLos Angeles TimesDec 19, 2019

Brimming with humanity, Wang's contemplative, minimalist approach forces us to consider the day-to-day lives of these people, and perhaps our own.

Ellie Lucas

RTFrom the Front RowDec 17, 2019

As the film progresses it becomes something at once wondrous and revelatory, a dynamic living document of modern China that invites viewers to take in the world around them.