无人区亮相柏林 No Man's Land shown at Berlin Film Festival

The darkly funny "No Man's Land" has just shown at the Berlin International Film Festival, rounding off the three Chinese films competing for the top Golden Bear award this year. The film is a kind of modern Chinese Western and sees a city lawyer journey across the Gobi desert, where he encounters a series of unusual characters who are as rugged and dangerous as the terrain itself. The film's director Ning Hao, said he watched a lot of Westerns as a child and nodded to the influence of Quentin Tarantino, but says he has taken far more from Chinese art and culture: "We do not have a 'western' film history in China and I was wondering how I could combine a 'western' with such a story. And then I thought, well, I need to do something about China, about Chinese people and their problems. I want them to be included in the film. So it became kind of a 'western', but also a Chinese story, because in China this thing about earning money and wanting to earn more and more money is a big issue." Along with "No Man's Land" "Black Coal, Thin Ice" and "Blind Massage" are the other Chinese films that are among 20 competing for this year's top prize in Berlin. The winner will be announced Saturday.