Chinese documentary director Wang Bing was recently nominated for the main competition of the 81st Venice Film Festival with the final chapter of his “Youth” trilogy, “Youth: Homecoming.” However, suspected of leaving the country to participate in the festival without obtaining the Dragon Seal (Mainland China’s film screening permit) from the Chinese Communist Party, the film “Youth: Homecoming” and all of Wang Bing’s works were banned by the popular Chinese forum “Douban.”
Despite the initial excitement of Wang Bing’s “Youth: Homecoming” being selected for the Venice Film Festival, the Chinese online forum Douban suddenly took down Wang Bing’s introduction page and works catalog. Investigation by reporters revealed that an article titled “Venice Film Festival lineup: Wang Bing’s ‘Youth: Homecoming’ nominated for the main competition” on the mainland portal site Sohu was no longer accessible, showing a “404” error. Additionally, a Weibo movie blogger who reported on Wang Bing’s nomination for the festival modified their article, referring to Wang Bing as “wang兵,” presumably to avoid triggering sensitive terms related to Wang Bing.
In response to Wang Bing and his works being banned on Chinese websites, netizens commented, “Being banned seems like an honor medal; just look at the blacklist to find the ones worth watching,” “There are not many good film and television works in China. If you want to find good Chinese movies and TV shows, look in the banned list,” “Now I have to watch ‘Youth: Homecoming.'”
At 56 years old, Wang Bing is known for his realistic documentary filmmaking, with his works frequently receiving accolades. In 2023, his documentary trilogy “Youth,” specifically “Youth: Spring,” was selected for the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary.
In 2024, following the selection of “Youth: Bitter,” another part of the “Youth” trilogy, for the international competition at the 77th Locarno Film Festival, Wang Bing’s final chapter “Youth: Homecoming” was announced as one of the most anticipated entries in the main competition of the 81st Venice Film Festival on July 23. With this film, Wang Bing will compete for the prestigious Golden Lion Award alongside 20 other films from around the world.
Wang Bing’s films focus on marginalized groups and exhibit a somber style. He places the camera near his subjects to record them for extended periods without interference, allowing the films to naturally showcase the vitality and struggles of ordinary people in the vastness of nature.
As early as 2002, Wang Bing independently produced the documentary “West of the Tracks,” which depicted the decline of Shenyang’s old industrial area and had a runtime of 7 hours. The film not only won numerous international awards but was also ranked second in the annual top ten list by the French film magazine “Les Cahiers du Cinéma” in 2004. In 2010, his feature film “The Ditch,” portraying the hellish life in a labor re-education farm around the 1960s, was selected for the official competition of the 67th Venice Film Festival. His oral history documentary on labor re-education, “Til Madness Do Us Part,” received the top prize at Japan’s Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in 2007. In 2012, his documentary “Three Sisters,” focusing on the survival conditions of left-behind children, won the Horizon Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Despite being a world-renowned documentary filmmaker, none of Wang Bing’s films have been released in China, and some of his works are unsearchable even on Chinese websites. Faced with the relentless and intensified ideological censorship by the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Bing once remarked, “To have a film publicly screened (in China), I must pass the review of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, but I have never applied, and I never will. I think it’s tedious and meaningless.”