The Story of Qiu Ju

Based on Chen Yunabin’s novella “The Wan Family’s Lawsuit”, The Story of Qiu Ju was a huge success on the festival circuit, earning a plethora of awards, including the Golden Lion for Zhang and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for Gong Li, at the Venice Film Festival. The film is set in present-day China (1992) in north-west Shaanxi province (an area which the director would return to in his film The Road Home). Many of the street scenes in the cities were filmed with a hidden camera so the images are a sort of documentary of China during the time of Deng Xiaoping. As film critic Roger Ebert said “along the way we absorb more information about the lives of ordinary people in everyday China than in any other film I’ve seen.” Gong Li is astonishing in the titular role, presenting a woman determined to achieve her goals with nothing but sheer courage.