65 Films & TV Shows Set In China During The 21st Century
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Lost in Beijing
Beijing The 2000sA look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife. Massage girl Pingguo (Apple) (The stunning Fan Bingbing) lives in a cramped apartment with her bad-tempered window cleaner husband Kun (Tong Dawei), barely eking by on their miniscule pay. When Pingguo gets raped by her boss Lin (Tony Leung) one afternoon, Kun, who is washing the windows of the building, witnesses the act. The enraged Kun tries to get even first by (unsuccessfully) blackmailing Lin, then by sleeping with Lin's wife (Elaine Kam). The relationships get even more tangled when Pingguo discovers she's pregnant. With the paternity of the baby up in the air, Kun, who is eager for money, strikes a deal with Lin, who is eager for a son.
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Fujian Blue
Fujian Province The 2000sIn the wake of China's open-door policy in the early 1980's, Fujian was one of the first Chinese coastal provinces to be opened to the outside world. Many of the male residents opted to go abroad for work, leaving behind their wives and families. Two decades later, Fujian is a microcosm of Chinese modernity: there are palatial suburbs populated by lonely "remittance widows"; neon-lit discotheques frequented by karaoke kids; coastal villages inhabited by impoverished fishermen and city centers dominated by gangs, snakeheads and language schools acting as fronts for organized human trafficking.
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Valley of Flowers
Tibet Tokyo Prefecture The 19th Century The 2000sA Himalayan legend of a love struggling against the inevitability of death, an astonishing tale spanning from the early 19th century mountain existence, to hectic, bustling modern day Tokyo.
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Meishi Street
Beijing The 2000sMEISHI STREET shows ordinary citizens taking a stand against the planned destruction of their homes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In order to widen traffic routes for the Olympic Games, the Beijing Municipal Government orders the demolition of entire neighborhoods. Several evictees of Meishi Street, located next to Tiananmen Square, fight through endless red tape and the indifference of fellow citizens for the right to keep their homes. Given video cameras by the filmmakers, they shoot exclusive footage of the eviction process, adding vivid intimacy to their story.
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Workingman's Death
🇺🇦 Ukraine 🇵🇰 Pakistan 🇨🇳 China 🇮🇩 Indonesia 🇳🇬 Nigeria The 2000sA documentary on the extremes to which workers will go to earn a living. — Is heavy manual labour disappearing or is it just becoming invisible? Where can we still find it in the 21st century? Workingman's Death follows the trail of the HEROES in the illegal mines of the Ukraine, sniffs out GHOST among the sulphur workers in Indonesia, finds itself face to face with LIONS at a slaughterhouse in Nigeria, mingles with BROTHERS as they cut a huge oil tanker into pieces in Pakistan, and joins Chinese steel workers in hoping for a glorious FUTURE.
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Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
California Inner Mongolia The 1990s The 2000sThis summer the Angels are back. — The Angels are charged with finding a pair of missing rings that are encoded with the personal information of members of the Witness Protection Program. As informants are killed, the ladies target a rogue agent who might be responsible.
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Returner
Tibet Tokyo Prefecture The 2000s The 2080sThe future could be history — After an alien invasion threatens to annihilate the human race, a young Japanese girl, named Milly, travels back in time from 2084 to October 2002, and enlists the reluctant aid of skilled Tokyo gunman, named Miyamoto, to discover and prevent the start of the war. However, trouble ensues when the two protagonists are forced to deal with a Japanese mafia boss, named Mizoguchi, who is somehow involved in the start of the war by keeping the first alien spaceship and its alien pilot captive, while our two heroes race against the clock to find a way to stop the oncoming destruction from the vengeance-seeking alien invasion fleet on its way to Earth.
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Unknown Pleasures
Shanxi Province The 2000sThree disaffected youths live in Datong in 2001, part of the new "Birth Control" generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.
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Shaolin Soccer
Shanghai The 2000sGet ready to kick some grass! — A young Shaolin follower reunites with his discouraged brothers to form a soccer team using their martial art skills to their advantage.
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Road to Redemption
🇨🇳 China The 2000sA couple come into contact with stolen mob money, gamble it away, and end up on the run from gangsters
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I Love Beijing
Beijing The 2000sFilmmaker Ning Ying returns to her favorite theme – the gradual decay of traditional Chinese values and culture at the dawn of the 21st century – in this low-key drama. Desi (Yu Lei) is a cab driver who has recently broken up with his wife. Lonely, Desi is searching for a new love, and as he drifts through Beijing in search of fares and a girlfriend, he sees a city that is increasingly bending to the influence of the West, with traditional pastimes and customs forced to make way for the onslaught of the free-market economy. Xia Ri Nuan Yangyang has been screened on the international film festival circuit in two different versions; the cut shown at the 2001 Rotterdam Film Festival ran 99 minutes, while the film was only 79 minutes when it appeared at the Berlin Film Festival that same year.
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Suzhou River
Shanghai The 2000sA tragic love story set in contemporary Shanghai. The film stars Zhou Xun in a dual role as two different women and Jia Hongsheng as a man obsessed with finding a woman from his past.
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The Mirror
Shanghai 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 🇹🇼 Taiwan 🇸🇬 Singapore The 1980s The 1990s The 1920s The 2000sThe grandson of a rich widow returns to Hong Kong with his girlfriend. They are charmed by an antique mirror at the grandmother's home. The mirror used to belonged to a famous courtesan in ...
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Johnny Mnemonic
Beijing New Jersey The 2020sThe hottest data on earth. In the coolest head in town. — In a dystopian 2021, Johnny is a data trafficker who has an implant that allows him to securely store data too sensitive for regular computer networks. On one delivery run, he accepts a package that not only exceeds the implant's safety limits—and will kill him if the data is not removed in time—but also contains information far more important and valuable than he had ever imagined. On a race against time, he must avoid the assassins sent to kill him and remove the data before it, too, ends his life.
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Double Dragon
California 🇨🇳 China The 2000sPower. Justice. Darkness. Light. — Two brothers have half of a powerful ancient Chinese talisman. An evil gang leader has the other half, and determines to get the brothers' half and have a complete medallion so he can gain absolute power.
