# Me and My Motherland
**Me and My Motherland** (我和我的祖国, also released as *My People, My Country*) is a 2019 Chinese anthology drama film made for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. It consists of seven short films directed by seven directors, each depicting ordinary people at one pivotal moment in the country's history between 1949 and 2019.[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) • [2](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2248468/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Chinese title | 我和我的祖国 (Wo he wo de zu guo); English titles include *My People, My Country*[2](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2248468/) |
| Release | September 30, 2019 in mainland China; 155 minutes; drama[2](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2248468/) |
| Directors | Chen Kaige (chief director), Zhang Yibai, Guan Hu, Xue Xiaolu, Xu Zheng, Ning Hao, and Wen Muye, with Huang Jianxin as chief producer[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) |
| Seven segments | *The Eve*, *Passing By*, *One For All*, *The Going Home*, *Hello Beijing*, *White Day Meteor*, and *The Escort*[3](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/201909/25/7c520371-f97b-433f-9e18-28c62c226e62.pdf) |
| Box office | 22.28 billion yuan (22.28亿元) within the 2019 National Day slate, 43.78% of the period's 43.86亿元 total; 27.63亿元 cumulative by October 22, 2019[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) • [4](https://media.people.com.cn/n1/2019/1219/c431191-31513616.html) |
| Audience satisfaction | 91.0 points in the 2019 China Film Audience Satisfaction Survey, a single-film record at the time, surpassing *Wolf Warrior 2*'s 89.2[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) |
| Awards | Hundred Flowers Award for Best Picture (35th, 2019); Huabiao Award for Outstanding Actress (Ren Suxi, 18th, 2023); Huading Award first place in film satisfaction (27th, 2020)[5](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2248468/info/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The film is seven shorts in chronological order from 1949 to 2019, each tied to a real event in the history of the People's Republic[13](https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026241239976). The title song, "Me and My Motherland," threads between them.
**The Eve (1949).** Beijing, the night before the founding ceremony. Engineer Lin Zhiyuan (Huang Bo) is in charge of the electric mechanism that will raise the new national flag at [Tiananmen](https://www.edgepedia.org/tiananmen), and there is no second take in front of the world. A rehearsal with a substitute flag exposes a flaw in the stopping mechanism, and the metal for a critical part has to be scrounged from neighbors, who bring whatever they own. On the morning itself, with minutes to go, the gear jams for a prosaic reason, a blocked part, and Lin climbs the 22-meter flagpole himself to make the final manual adjustment, welding in place as the flag rises below him. The segment plays the repair shop as a thriller, and the crisis is fixed by crawling, not by luck.
**Passing By (1964).** Scientist Gao Yuan (Zhang Yi) is assigned to the atomic bomb project, a posting so secret that he vanishes from his girlfriend Fang Min (Ren Suxi) without explanation. Years later, on a bus, they meet by chance and he still cannot say who he is or what he does. As they ride, the radio announces that China's first atomic bomb test has succeeded, October 16, 1964, and the bus dissolves into a celebrating crowd that sweeps the two apart. The national triumph is the thing that permanently separates them, and the segment ends on her realization of what his silence cost.
**The Champion (1984).** In a Shanghai longtang, schoolboy Dongdong (Han Haolin) is the only one who can hold the rooftop antenna steady so his neighbors can watch the Chinese women's volleyball team play the United States for Olympic gold in Los Angeles. Mid-match, he realizes Xiaomei, the girl he likes, is leaving for America that very evening, and he must choose between keeping the signal alive for the whole street and running down to say goodbye. **He abandons the antenna at the worst possible moment to chase Xiaomei's truck, and the film lets the signal come back anyway and the match be won.** The camera shoots the neighbors from low angles so the crowd looms large and warm, cutting to close-ups of the little rituals of the viewing, watermelon, fans, a radio backup, and when China takes the gold the victory is staged in slow motion as the street erupts[14](https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2024.03.008). Decades later, as a coach, Dongdong is reunited with Xiaomei on national television. Bullet-comment data show minute 64 of the whole film, the moment of his choice, drew the most comments of any scene, 442[14](https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2024.03.008).
**Return (1997).** In Hong Kong, watchmaker Hua repairs the timepiece of a colonial-era policeman so it will read the correct second at midnight on July 1, 1997, when the [Union Jack](https://www.edgepedia.org/union-jack) comes down and the Chinese flag must rise at exactly 0:00:00, a timing negotiated to the second between British and Chinese officials. The film cuts between the diplomats arguing over seconds and the watchmaker's hands over gears, making the repair and the ceremony the same obsession with accuracy. At the stroke of midnight the last uniformed officer checks the correct time one final time, and the flag rises on schedule.
**Hello Beijing (2008).** A Beijing taxi driver (Ge You) comes into an official Beijing Olympics ceremony ticket and gives it away, only for the recipient to turn out to be a boy from earthquake-devastated Wenchuan, who wanted the ticket to honor his father, a builder who died in the earthquake and had helped construct the Olympic venue. The driver's small vanity dissolves into something genuinely generous.
**The Guiding Star (2016).** Chen Kaige's own chapter is the longest and loosest. Two impoverished brothers herding sheep on the Inner Mongolian grasslands encounter the returning Shenzhou 11 astronauts after their 2016 landing, and the encounter with the country's space program briefly opens their dead-end lives. Their estranged father, a horseman long gone, returns at the end, staged with feeling but arriving late and resolving easily.
**One for All (2019).** The finale follows a female fighter pilot flying in the 70th-anniversary military parade over Beijing, closing the anthology by putting a woman from the newest generation in the sky above the flag that Lin Zhiyuan raised seventy years earlier.
### Characters
Lin Zhiyuan (Huang Bo) is the anxious, comic, quietly heroic engineer of the opening segment, the anthology's strongest piece of acting, a man whose panic about counterweights and backup plans makes a flagpole into a suspense set piece.
Gao Yuan (Zhang Yi) is the atomic-bomb scientist who chooses national secrecy over the woman he loves, and Fang Min (Ren Suxi) is the girlfriend whose years of waiting end on a bus she cannot get off.
Dongdong (Han Haolin) is the Shanghai schoolboy turned human antenna, torn between a volleyball final and a first love; Xiaomei is the girl emigrating to America.
The taxi driver (Ge You) is Ning Hao's bluff, vain Beijing everyman, whose prized Olympics ticket becomes a gift that matters more than he knew.
The watchmaker and the policeman of the Hong Kong segment carry the handover through craft and punctuality rather than speeches, and the herdboys and their returned father close out the grasslands fable.
### Interpretations and controversies
Scholars have read the film as a study in how a state-commissioned "main-melody" film generates feeling: pride-based mythmaking of past glories, happiness borrowed from popular culture, and nostalgia aimed at personal cultural memory[13](https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026241239976). A bullet-comment (danmaku) analysis found the audience's emotional peak lands not on a ceremony but on a boy's private dilemma during the volleyball segment[14](https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2024.03.008). Critics have also noted the pattern beneath the anthology: segments that resolve personal conflict by dissolving it into patriotic feeling, most visibly in the volleyball chapter, which wants both the sacrifice and the reward.
## Production and structure
The film was led by Huaxia Film Distribution, with Chen Kaige as chief director, Huang Jianxin as chief producer, and Zhang Yibai as chief planner; the seven directors jointly helmed the project as a National Day tribute picture.[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) It was announced in March 2019 at a launch event in Beijing and scheduled for the National Day holiday.[6](https://ent.people.com.cn/n1/2019/0321/c1012-30988080.html)
**Seven moments, seven directors.** The segments follow the founding ceremony of 1949 (*The Eve*, directed by Guan Hu), China's first atomic bomb test (*Passing By*, Zhang Yibai), the Chinese women's volleyball team's first Olympic title (*One For All*, Xu Zheng), the 1997 Hong Kong handover (*The Going Home*, Xue Xiaolu), the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening (*Hello Beijing*, Ning Hao), the landing of the [Shenzhou](https://www.edgepedia.org/shenzhou) 11 return capsule (*White Day Meteor*, Chen Kaige), and a 2015 anniversary military parade (*The Escort*, Wen Muye).[4](https://media.people.com.cn/n1/2019/1219/c431191-31513616.html) • [7](https://www.cssn.cn/skgz/202209/t20220916_5517870.shtml) The chief producer Huang Jianxin summarized the creative concept as "historical instants, collective memory, head-on collision," focusing on how ordinary people's lives connect to major national events.[6](https://ent.people.com.cn/n1/2019/0321/c1012-30988080.html)
The seven directors span four generations: Chen Kaige (born 1952), Zhang Yibai (1963), Guan Hu (1968), Xue Xiaolu (1970), Xu Zheng (1972), Ning Hao (1977), and Wen Muye (1985), the youngest after winning Best New Director at the Golden Horse Awards for *[Dying to Survive](https://www.edgepedia.org/dying-to-survive)*.[6](https://ent.people.com.cn/n1/2019/0321/c1012-30988080.html) • [8](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/GB/n1/2020/0522/c432714-31719943.html) The cast includes Huang Bo, Zhang Yi, Wu Jing, Du Jiang, Ge You, Liu Haoran, Chen Feiyu, and Song Jia, alongside dozens of other established actors.[9](https://www.cpophome.com/my-people-my-country-huang-bo-zhang-yi-wu-jing/) • [3](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/201909/25/7c520371-f97b-433f-9e18-28c62c226e62.pdf) In Chen Kaige's *White Day Meteor*, his longtime fellow Fifth Generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang played a retired poverty-alleviation official opposite the young actors Liu Haoran and Chen Feiyu.[10](https://epaper.lnd.com.cn/lswbepaper/pc/att/201909/18/557530ba-1a8f-4d79-82b9-26942634e8a5.pdf)
## Theme song
The film takes its title from the patriotic song *Wo he wo de zuguo*, created in 1984 by the musicians Qin Yongcheng and [Zhang Li](https://www.edgepedia.org/zhang-li); the melody was reportedly written in about 20 minutes, and the lyrics came later during a trip to Guilin, after which Li Guyi's performance spread the song nationwide.[11](https://www.kflz.gov.cn/sitesources/zmdjw/page_pc/lzyw/xwtt/article1935727f13704e5b8ead022bd27c4cfc.html) For the film, the pop singer [Faye Wong](https://www.edgepedia.org/faye-wong) (Wang Fei) recorded a new version of the song as its theme, a choice that scholars read as recasting the relationship between the individual and the nation in a contemporary, personal voice.[8](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/GB/n1/2020/0522/c432714-31719943.html)
## Box office and reception
The film opened on September 30, 2019 and set a series of speed records for a domestic release, passing 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8 billion yuan faster than any previous Chinese film, and became the fastest National Day release to pass 2 billion yuan, doing so in 6 days 8 hours 48 minutes compared with 21 days 21 hours 26 minutes for *Never Say Die* in 2017.[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) By October 7 it had earned over 2.2 billion yuan with more than 60 million admissions.[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) It led the 2019 National Day slate, which totaled over 5 billion yuan across three tribute films.[12](https://culture.people.com.cn/n1/2019/1009/c1013-31388770.html)
In the China Film Audience Satisfaction Survey for 2019, the film scored 91.0, the highest single-film score among the 267 films surveyed to that point, and the National Day slate's 88.6 was the highest slate score since the survey began.[1](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html) The film also opened overseas on October 1, 2019 in nearly 40 countries and regions, with linked premiere events in nine overseas cities.[3](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/201909/25/7c520371-f97b-433f-9e18-28c62c226e62.pdf)
## Critical interpretation
Scholars have treated the film as a marker of change in Chinese mainstream cinema. Li Ning, a film scholar then at Beijing Normal University's school of arts and media, argues that the film replaces the epic, hero-centered narration of earlier tribute films with a "microhistorical" approach: it shows brief instants rather than whole events, places ordinary individuals in the foreground while pushing leaders and heroes into the background, and mixes genres across its seven segments, from Guan Hu's suspense structure in *The Eve* to the comedy of Xu Zheng's *One For All* and Ning Hao's *Hello Beijing*.[8](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/GB/n1/2020/0522/c432714-31719943.html) The same study notes that the film's protagonists are largely urban intellectuals and technical professionals, so workers and farmers receive little screen time, and that Chen Kaige's allegorical *White Day Meteor* divided audiences while the other six segments follow a daily-life realist mode.[8](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/GB/n1/2020/0522/c432714-31719943.html)
The film's success also spawned a series. *My People, My Homeland* (2020) and *My Country, My Parents* (2021) joined it to form the "Wo he wo de" National Day trilogy, all using the same multi-director, multi-segment format.[7](https://www.cssn.cn/skgz/202209/t20220916_5517870.shtml) A companion book recording the film's production, including the seven segment scripts and essays by the producers and directors, was donated to the National Library of China.[3](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/201909/25/7c520371-f97b-433f-9e18-28c62c226e62.pdf)
## References
1. [国庆档票房冠军《我和我的祖国》节后再掀全民观影热潮, 国家电影局/中国电影报 (October 10, 2019)](https://www.chinafilm.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/201910/t20191010_1211.html)
2. [我和我的祖国 (2019), 1905电影网](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2248468/)
3. [以"国史见证物"开启全民时代记忆, 文艺报 (September 25, 2019)](https://wyb.chinawriter.com.cn/attachment/201909/25/7c520371-f97b-433f-9e18-28c62c226e62.pdf)
4. [传播学视域下电影《我和我的祖国》走红原因探析, 人民网/《视听》 (December 19, 2019)](https://media.people.com.cn/n1/2019/1219/c431191-31513616.html)
5. [我和我的祖国 详细资料, 1905电影网](https://www.1905.com/mdb/film/2248468/info/)
6. [电影《我和我的祖国》定档国庆 七大导演畅叙新中国记忆, 人民网 (March 21, 2019)](https://ent.people.com.cn/n1/2019/0321/c1012-30988080.html)
7. ["我和我的"系列主旋律电影中的时代意蕴, 中国社会科学网 (2022)](https://www.cssn.cn/skgz/202209/t20220916_5517870.shtml)
8. [主旋律电影的主体重构与美学新变——以《我和我的祖国》为例, 李宁, 《中国当代文学研究》2020年第3期, 中国作家网](https://www.chinawriter.com.cn/GB/n1/2020/0522/c432714-31719943.html)
9. [My People, My Country, CPOP HOME](https://www.cpophome.com/my-people-my-country-huang-bo-zhang-yi-wu-jing/)
10. [出演《我和我的祖国》，与老友陈凯歌合作：田壮壮专访, 辽沈晚报 (September 18, 2019)](https://epaper.lnd.com.cn/lswbepaper/pc/att/201909/18/557530ba-1a8f-4d79-82b9-26942634e8a5.pdf)
11. [阅微丨电影《我和我的祖国》今日上映，这首歌是如何诞生的？, 中央纪委国家监委网站 (September 30, 2019)](https://www.kflz.gov.cn/sitesources/zmdjw/page_pc/lzyw/xwtt/article1935727f13704e5b8ead022bd27c4cfc.html)
12. ["最强国庆档"票房超50亿 《我和我的祖国》一路领跑, 人民网 (October 9, 2019)](https://culture.people.com.cn/n1/2019/1009/c1013-31388770.html)
13. [https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026241239976](https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026241239976)
14. [https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2024.03.008](https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2024.03.008)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2015 to 2019 › Drama films 2019*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license