Country guide · Asia
10 Essential Chinese Films + 10 Movies Set in or About China
China on the atlas: the strongest films of its own cinema, and the films the rest of the world has set there. Every list is curated and ranked by hand.
10 Essential Chinese Films
Native cinema in China’s own creative voice — the passport route that earns visas and citizenship.
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1. Spring in a Small Town
In a decaying town in postwar China, the quiet, stifled life of an unhappily married couple is disturbed when an old friend of the husband — and a former love of the wife — arrives for a visit, reawakening buried longings. A tender, restrained masterpiece of Chinese cinema.
Curator’s note: Spring in a Small Town was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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2. Raise the Red Lantern
In 1920s China, a young educated woman is married off as the fourth concubine of a wealthy lord and thrust into a household where the mistresses vie ruthlessly for their master's favor, marked each night by the raising of red lanterns. Zhang Yimou's ravishing, chilling drama.
Curator’s note: Raise the Red Lantern was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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3. To Live
Spanning the upheavals of mid-20th-century China from civil war through the Cultural Revolution, this epic follows one ordinary couple who lose their fortune and endure wave after wave of history's cruelty with stubborn resilience. Zhang Yimou's humane, sweeping drama.
Curator’s note: To Live was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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4. Yellow Earth
A Communist soldier is sent to a poor village in 1930s northern China to collect folk songs, boarding with a peasant family whose hard, tradition-bound life he can barely comprehend — and stirring impossible hopes in the household's young daughter. A founding work of the Fifth Generation.
Curator’s note: Yellow Earth was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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5. Hero
During China's Warring States period, a lone warrior arrives at the court of the king of Qin claiming to have slain three legendary assassins, and recounts how he did it — though the truth may be more layered than it first appears. Zhang Yimou's dazzling, painterly martial-arts epic.
Curator’s note: Hero was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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6. An Elephant Sitting Still
Across a single grey day in a bleak northern Chinese city, four despairing people — a bullied student, a guilt-ridden gangster, a trapped young woman, and a discarded old man — are each drawn toward a rumored elephant that simply sits, unmoved by the world. A monumental four-hour drama.
Curator’s note: An Elephant Sitting Still was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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7. A Touch of Sin
Four loosely linked stories set in different corners of modern China follow ordinary people pushed to sudden violence by corruption, humiliation, and despair. Jia Zhangke's fierce, ripped-from-the-headlines portrait of a nation's fractures.
Curator’s note: A Touch of Sin was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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8. Ash Is Purest White
When a fiercely loyal woman takes the fall for her gangster boyfriend and goes to prison, she emerges years later to search for him across a rapidly changing China, only to find their world and their bond transformed. Jia Zhangke's sweeping tale of love and time in the underworld.
Curator’s note: Ash Is Purest White was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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9. Kung Fu Hustle
In 1940s Shanghai, a small-time wannabe gangster's schemes to impress the fearsome Axe Gang accidentally awaken the hidden kung-fu masters living in a ramshackle tenement. Stephen Chow's gleefully cartoonish martial-arts comedy.
Curator’s note: Kung Fu Hustle was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
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10. Ne Zha
Born as the reincarnation of a demonic force and feared by everyone around him, a mischievous, rebellious boy-god is fated by prophecy to bring ruin — but sets out to defy his destiny and choose his own path. A record-breaking Chinese animated fantasy.
Curator’s note: Ne Zha was retained as one of the strongest China features after comparison for craft, enduring critical or cult reputation, influence, and importance within the country’s cinema.
10 Movies Set in or About China
Outside filmmakers looking toward China: optional perspectives for a wider journey.
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1. Mulan
When the emperor calls one man from every household to repel a Hun invasion, a spirited young woman disguises herself as a soldier to spare her ailing father, braving grueling training and battle to prove herself. Disney's animated adventure.
Curator’s note: A China-set adaptation of a Chinese legend and filial-warrior myth.
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2. Empire of the Sun
A pampered young English boy in Shanghai is separated from his parents when the Japanese invade, and comes of age in a prison camp, taken under the wing of a scavenging American sailor. Steven Spielberg's sweeping wartime coming-of-age drama.
Curator’s note: A Shanghai and wartime China story about occupation, internment, and childhood survival.
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3. The Red Violin
Following a single mysterious crimson violin across three centuries and several countries, this drama traces the lives it touches — and the beauty and tragedy it leaves behind — from its creation in 17th-century Italy to a modern-day auction house.
Curator’s note: The Red Violin is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with China.
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4. The Painted Veil
A shy English bacteriologist, betrayed by his unfaithful wife, drags her to a cholera-stricken village in remote China, where amid the epidemic and their frozen marriage something unexpected begins to grow. A handsome period drama adapted from Somerset Maugham.
Curator’s note: A China-set cholera and marriage drama centered on colonial-era interior China.
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5. Spy Game
On the day he retires, a veteran CIA officer learns that his former protégé has been captured in China and is set to be executed — and that the agency may let it happen. Racing the clock, he works to save him. Tony Scott's slick espionage thriller.
Curator’s note: Spy Game is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with China.
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6. Seven Years in Tibet
An arrogant Austrian mountaineer interned during World War II escapes across the Himalayas to the forbidden city of Lhasa, where an unlikely friendship with the young Dalai Lama gradually changes him. Based on a true story.
Curator’s note: A Tibet story whose central conflict involves China, occupation, and exile.
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7. Indochine
In 1930s French colonial Indochina, a rubber-plantation owner, her adopted Vietnamese daughter, and a dashing naval officer form a fraught romantic triangle as the winds of revolution begin to blow. A lush, Oscar-winning historical epic.
Curator’s note: Indochine is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with China.
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8. M. Butterfly
In 1960s Beijing, a French diplomat falls obsessively in love with a beautiful Chinese opera singer, unaware that his lover is not at all who he believes. David Cronenberg's haunting drama of desire and deception, based on a true story.
Curator’s note: M. Butterfly is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with China.
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9. 55 Days at Peking
During the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, the diplomats, soldiers, and civilians of a dozen nations barricade themselves in Peking's foreign legations and hold out against a prolonged siege. A large-scale historical epic.
Curator’s note: A Boxer Rebellion story centered on Beijing and imperial China in crisis.
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10. Shanghai Surprise
In 1930s China, a fortune-hunting adventurer and a prim missionary nurse reluctantly join forces to recover a lost cache of opium — she to ease her patients' pain, he to buy his way out — on a hectic, exotic quest. A romantic adventure comedy.
Curator’s note: Shanghai Surprise is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with China.
Selected by the FilmsAroundThe.World editorial desk
Lists are ranked for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and depth of engagement with place. Native selections require a verified creative relationship to the country; souvenir selections require an outside creative lead and a country-centered story. Read the methodology.
Editorial review: 2026-07-13
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