Dir. Fengliang Yang, Yimou Zhang
Notable as the first Chinese production nominated for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards (although it was made with Japanese funding), this visually splendid tragedy focuses on a beautiful young woman (dynamically played by Gong Li) who has been sold as a wife to Jinshan (Li Wei), an old cloth dyer sometime in the 1920s. With assured direction and a superb use of colour it’s not hard to see why Zhang’s tale of illicit passion is considered by many to be his masterpiece.