"The Nightingale" represents China to the Oscars
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"The Nightingale" represents China to the Oscars


A still from "The Nightingale".

9 Oct – Though it was earlier rumoured that Zhang Yimou's "Coming Home" and Jean-Jacques Annaud's "Wolf Totem" have the chance to be selected as mainland China's representative movie to the Oscars, it was veteran French filmmaker Philippe Muyl's "The Nightingale" that finally made the pick.

As reported on ECNS News, the movie, which is also the second official Sino-French collaboration, was able to defeat other expected selections, including Jiang Wen's "Gone with the Bullet".

The movie is a Chinese take on Muyl's 2002 film, "Le Papillon", which stars Li Baotian as an old widower who was asked by his son to take his petulant granddaughter Renxing (played by Yang Xinyi) on a journey back to his hometown.

Li Xiaoran and Qin Hao also star as Renxing's parents.

On the subject as to why "Gone with The Bullets" and "Wolf Totem" did not make it to final selection, it was revealed that the two movies did not screen in time to make the cut-off deadline.

Last year, Feng Xiaogang's "Back to 1942" was selected as China's representative film for the Oscar's Best Foreign Feature category, but failed to make it on the final shortlist.

Hong Kong has already selected its representative film in the likes of Ann Hui's "The Golden Era".


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