The Films of Zhang Yimou

In April of last year I wanted to watch Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, one of his newer films that I hadn’t seen et, and at the time I decided that I would start by doing a massive re-watch of his work. During my university years, when I made a switch to studying History, and then veered into Asian Studies, his films had a very strong influence on me. It had been ages since I had revisited his films, and there were a few (more recent ones) that I had missed as well. It took me longer than expected, as I took a long break at some point, but today I finally capped this movie marathon of 17 films with Shadow. The ones I didn’t get to watch I just wasn’t able to find ways to watch them — there are a couple of older (lesser known) ones, as well as a few films from the last decade, including three films he has released since Shadow, which came out in 2018. I hope to be able to watch these as well at some point. But for now, you can read my mini reviews that I posted on Letterboxed via the links below — I also shared them all in this Twitter thread.

1. Red Sorghum (1988)
2. Ju Dou (1990)
3. Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
4. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992)
5. To Live (1994)
6. Shanghai Triad (1995)
7. Keep Cool (1997)
8. The Road Home (1999)
9. Happy Times (2000)
10. Hero (2002)
11. House of Flying Daggers (2004)
12. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005)
13. Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)
14. The Flowers of War (2011)
15. Coming Home (2014)
16. The Great Wall (2016)
17. Shadow (2018)