282 Films & TV Shows Set In China During The 20th Century
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Death and Glory in Changde
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sDirected by Shen Dong and starring Ray Lui, An Yixuan and Yuan Wenkang, Death and Glory in Changde recalls one of the most cruel and controversial battles during China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), Changde Battle, in November 1943.
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Let the Bullets Fly
🇨🇳 China The 1920sA comic western legend — Set in China during the Warlords Period of the 1920s, notorious bandit chief Zhang descends upon a remote provincial town posing as its new mayor, an identity that he had hijacked from Old Tang, himself a small-time imposter. Hell-bent on making a fast buck, Zhang soon meets his match in the tyrannical local gentry Huang as a deadly battle of wit and brutality ensues.
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Once Upon a Time in Tibet
Tibet The 1930s The 1940sSet during the Second Sino-Japanese War(1937-1945), the US army brings supplies to China by flying over the Himalayas. A love story then ensues between an American pilot and a Tibetan girl who saved his life when his airplane crashed.
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Apart Together
Shanghai The 1990sLiu returns to his native city Shanghai after 50 years spent in Taiwan. He has come to find the first love of his life, Qiao, who he left behind pregnant. In the meantime, Qiao has married and formed a family. But Liu is determined to get the family's approval to take her away with him.
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A Jewish Girl in Shanghai
Shanghai The 1940s The 1930sBased upon the popular graphic novel by Wu Lin, this is the first Chinese animated film to portray the Holocaust. The film centers around the warm friendship between Rina, a wide-eyed European Jewish schoolgirl and A-Gen, a Chinese pancake seller, who teach each other about their distant worlds as Shanghai struggles beneath its own cruelly portrayed Japanese occupation.
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John Rabe
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sHistory Needs Extraordinary Heroes — A true-story account of a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937-38.
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City of Life and Death
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sCity of Life and Death takes place in 1937, during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Imperial Japanese Army has just captured the then-capital of the Republic of China, Nanjing. What followed was known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, a period of several weeks wherein tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed.
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The Message
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940s1942, Nanjing (Nanking). Following a series of assassination attempts on officials of the Japanese-controlled puppet government, the Japanese spy chief gathers a group of suspects in a mansion house for questioning. A tense game of "cat and mouse" ensues as the Chinese code-breaker attempts to send out a crucial message while protecting his/her own identity.
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Mao's Last Dancer
Texas Shandong Province The 1970s The 1980sBefore you can fly, you have to be free. — At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.
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Cow
Shandong Province The 1930s The 1940sA Chinese peasant is given the responsibility of protecting his village's special dairy cow during a particularly harsh winter in 1940.
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The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
🇨🇳 China The 1940s The 3rd Century BCA New Evil Awakens. — Archaeologist Rick O'Connell travels to China, pitting him against an emperor from the 2,000-year-old Han dynasty who's returned from the dead to pursue a quest for world domination. This time, O'Connell enlists the help of his wife and son to quash the so-called 'Dragon Emperor' and his abuse of supernatural power.
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The Children of Huang Shi
🇨🇳 China The 1940s The 1930sWar made them orphans, one man made them legends — About young British journalist, George Hogg, who with the assistance of a courageous Australian nurse, saves a group of orphaned children during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937.
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Ip Man
Guangdong Province The 1940s The 1930sThe celebrated Kung Fu master of Bruce Lee. — A semi-biographical account of Yip Man, the first martial arts master to teach the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun. The film focuses on events surrounding Ip that took place in the city of Foshan between the 1930s to 1940s during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Directed by Wilson Yip, the film stars Donnie Yen in the lead role, and features fight choreography by Sammo Hung.
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The Good, the Bad, the Weird
🇰🇷 South Korea Jilin Province Liaoning Province The 1930s The 1940sA Fistful of Fun! — The story of three Korean outlaws in 1930s Manchuria and their dealings with the Japanese army and Chinese and Russian bandits. The Good (a Bounty hunter), the Bad (a hitman), and the Weird (a thief) battle the army and the bandits in a race to use a treasure map to uncover the riches of legend.
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Dachimawa Lee
🇰🇷 South Korea Jilin Province New Jersey The 1940sUnder Japanese imperialism, Korean national treasure Golden Buddha is stolen. More important to national security, the statue contains vital information concerning Korean freedom fighters and their whereabouts as well as their true identities. The interim Korean government appoints legendary Korean spy Agent Dachimawa Lee to recover the fabled statue and reveal the dark plot behind the theft.
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Philosophy of a Knife
🇯🇵 Japan 🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sThe true history of Japanese Unit 731, from its beginnings in the 1930s to its demise in 1945, and the subsequent trials in Khabarovsk, USSR, of many of the Japanese doctors from Unit 731. The facts are told, and previously unknown evidence is revealed by an eyewitness to these events, former doctor and military translator, Anatoly Protasov.
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24 City
Sichuan Province The 1970s The 1960s The 1950sChengdu nowadays. The state owned factory 420 shuts down to give way to a complex of luxury apartments called "24 CITY". Three generations, eight characters : old workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories melt into the History of China.
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Forever Enthralled
Beijing The 1930s The 1940sA biographical account of Mei Lanfang, China's greatest opera star.
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Lust, Caution
Shanghai 🇭🇰 Hong Kong The 1940s The 1930sDuring World War II a secret agent must seduce, then assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.
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Nanking
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sThe true story of how a few brave souls saved the lives of thousands. — The story of the rape of Nanking, one of the most tragic events in history. In 1937, the invading Japanese army murdered over 200,000 and raped tens of thousands of Chinese. In the midst of this horror, a small group of Western expatriates banded together to save 250,000. Nanking shows the tremendous impact individuals can make on the course of history.
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Black Belt
🇨🇳 China 🇯🇵 Japan The 1930s The 1940sReal Fight, Real Karate, Real Japan. — Set in 1932, amid the rise of militarism after the establishment of the Manchukuo colony in Northeast China, the story centers on a trio of karateka. Studying under their aging master in a small dojo in the woods of central Kyushu, Choei, Taikan and Giryu face a company of kempeitai military police come to requisition their dojo for use as a military base.
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The Matrimony
Shanghai The 1930sTill Death Do Us Part — A woman finds the key to a room in the attic that her husband forbids her from entering. When she opens the door, she is confronted with the haunting existence of the woman her husband refuses to forget.
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Blood Brothers
Shanghai The 1930sThe days of innocence have passed. They must make their choices like men. But at what costs? Is blood really thicker than water? — Fung (Daniel Wu) and his best friends, brothers Kang (Liu Ye) and Hu (Tony Yang), leave the countryside together to make it big in Shanghai. Things aren't so easy in the city, however, and the brothers stumble and toil until opportunity brings them to Club Paradise and ruthless mob boss Hong (Sun Honglei). While Kang embraces his newfound power in the Shanghai triad, Fung and Hu are less comfortable with the crime and violence, sending the brothers slowly but surely down opposite paths. Fung falls for Hong's woman, sassy nightclub singer Lulu (Shu Qi) who is also involved with Hong's top henchman Mark (Chang Chen). When Hong catches scent of the betrayal, he sends Kang to finish off business, leading the brothers to meet at gunpoint on a cold Shanghai night. Set in Shanghai during the 1930s, the story is inspired by John Woo's classic work Bullet in the Head, released in 1990.
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Blind Mountain
Shaanxi Province The 1990sBlind Mountain follows a young woman, Bai Xuemei, in the early 1990s who recently graduated from college and attempts to find work to help pay for her brother's education. In the process, she is drugged, kidnapped and sold as a bride to a villager in the Qinling Mountains of China's Shaanxi province. Trapped in the fiercely traditional town, the young woman finds that her avenues of escape are all blocked. As she searches for allies, including a young boy, a school teacher and a mailman, she suffers from being raped by her "husband" and continued beatings at the hands of the villagers, her husband, and her husbands' parents.
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Fearless
Shanghai Tianjin The 1910s The 1900sMastering others is strength. Mastering yourself makes you fearless. — Huo Yuan Jia became the most famous martial arts fighter in all of China at the turn of the 20th Century. Huo faced personal tragedy but ultimately fought his way out of darkness, defining the true spirit of martial arts and also inspiring his nation. The son of a great fighter who didn't wish for his child to follow in his footsteps, Huo resolves to teach himself how to fight - and win.
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