Drifters (2003)

The Sixth Generation (第六代) emerged in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown — filmmakers who worked outside the state studio system on 16mm film and digital video, with non-professional actors and no official backing. Where the Fifth Generation used allegory and visual splendour to speak about history, the Sixth Generation turned to the streets of contemporary China: migrant workers, factory hands, provincial pickpockets, displaced youth, the people left behind or ground up by the country's headlong modernisation. Shot with documentary texture — long takes, handheld cameras, ambient sound — their films have a rawness and intimacy that state-sanctioned cinema could not produce. Key figures: Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯, born 1970) — the movement's most internationally celebrated voice, whose Still Life won the Golden Lion at Venice (2006) and who received Cannes' Carrosse d'Or in 2015; films span Pickpocket through Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World, A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart, Ash Is Purest White and Caught by the Tides. Lou Ye (娄烨, born 1965) — twice banned from filmmaking for five years for showing unauthorised work abroad; Suzhou River, Summer Palace, Spring Fever, Blind Massage and Saturday Fiction are all essential. Wang Xiaoshuai (王小帅, born 1966) — Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams, So Long My Son. Wang Bing (王兵, born 1967) — China's great documentary filmmaker, whose Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (9 hours) is a landmark of world cinema; also Dead Souls (8 hours), 'Til Madness Do Us Part, Mrs. Fang, and the ongoing Youth trilogy.