General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

My People, My Country (我和我的祖国)

My People, My Country (我和我的祖国) is a 2019 Chinese anthology drama film made to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, consisting of seven short films by seven directors that follow ordinary people through landmark moments in the country's history from 1949 to 2016.¹ Chen Kaige served as chief director, Huang Jianxin as chief producer, and Zhang Yibai as chief planner, with Chen Kaige, Zhang Yibai, Guan Hu, Xue Xiaolu, Xu Zheng, Ning Hao, and Wen Muye each directing one segment.¹ It was led by Huaxia Film Distribution Company and released in mainland China on September 30, 2019, at the start of the National Day holiday week.² The film became the top earner of the 2019 National Day release period and set several box office records for Chinese patriotic "tribute" films.³

Key fact	Detail
Release	September 30, 2019 (mainland China); 155 minutes; drama, "new mainstream" genre²
Structure	Seven segments by seven directors spanning 1949 to 2016, linked by the theme "historic moments, shared memory"¹^•⁴
Box office	31.70亿元 cumulative, the first tribute film to pass 3 billion yuan; 60.318 million admissions³
Speed record	Passed 2 billion yuan in 6 days 8 hours 48 minutes, the fastest National Day release to that mark¹
Audience satisfaction	91.0 points in the 2019 China Film Audience Satisfaction Survey, a single-film record, ahead of Wolf Warrior 2's 89.2¹
Major awards	Best Film at the 35th Hundred Flowers Awards (2020); Special Jury Prize at the 33rd Golden Rooster Awards (2020)⁵^•⁶
Theme song	Sung by Faye Wong (王菲), released with a music video on September 24, 2019⁷

Spoilers

The seven segments

Each director took one historic moment from the 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic and told it through the eyes of a private individual rather than a leader or hero.⁴ The segments, in screening order:⁴

The Eve (前夜), directed by Guan Hu and starring Huang Bo, about the engineer Lin Zhiyuan's race to guarantee the electric flag-raising at the founding ceremony of October 1, 1949.⁴
Passing By (相遇), directed by Zhang Yibai and starring Zhang Yi, about a researcher on the project that produced China's first atomic bomb, detonated on October 16, 1964.⁴
The Champion (夺冠), directed by Xu Zheng, about a Shanghai alley neighborhood watching the Chinese women's volleyball team win Olympic gold on August 8, 1984, its first world-title three-peat.⁴
Going Home (回归), directed by Xue Xiaolu and starring Du Jiang, about the Hong Kong handover of July 1, 1997.⁴
Hello Beijing (北京你好), directed by Ning Hao and starring Ge You, about a Beijing taxi driver and a ticket to the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony of August 8, 2008.⁴
The Guiding Star (白昼流星), directed by Chen Kaige and starring Liu Haoran and Chen Feiyu, about two vagrant brothers on the Inner Mongolian grassland who witness the landing of the Shenzhou 11 return capsule in 2016.⁴
One for All (护航), directed by Wen Muye and starring Song Jia, about a fighter pilot assigned as a reserve for the September 3, 2015 military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the victory over Japan.⁴

Production

The project began in late December 2018, when the seven directors first met and Chen Kaige proposed telling the story of "small people" in a "great era."⁸ The team drew up more than 30 candidate stories drawn from events since 1949 and narrowed them to seven, weighing length and the spread of years across the decades.⁸^•⁹ Directors exchanged story proposals in group discussion; Ning Hao, for example, floated a 1997 Hong Kong handover story and a Sichuan story about a pair of cloth shoes before settling on the taxi-driver plot that became Hello Beijing, while the opening The Eve idea came from Chen Kaige and was taken up by Guan Hu.⁸

The film runs 155 minutes, and the end credits were so long that the English titles had to be cut to fit.⁹ Several segments invested heavily in period detail: for The Guiding Star, Chen Kaige recruited the actual Shenzhou 11 astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, used the real return capsule, parachute, and spacesuits, and assembled more than a hundred vehicles on the Gobi set; for Going Home, actors Du Jiang and Zhu Yilong underwent military training in flag-ceremony drill.¹⁰

A companion book of the same title, published by the Commercial Press, collected the shooting scripts of the seven segments, essays by the producers and directors, and stills, and was released alongside the film.¹¹

Box office and reception

The film opened against two other patriotic releases, The Captain and The Climbers, and led the slate from the start.¹² It set successive speed records for a domestic film passing 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8 billion yuan, and reached 2 billion yuan in 6 days 8 hours 48 minutes, faster than any previous National Day release; the previous benchmark, Never Say Die in 2017, had taken 21 days 21 hours 26 minutes.¹ By October 10 it had earned 22.28亿元, 43.78 percent of the 43.86亿元 National Day slate total.¹ Its final cumulative total was 31.70亿元, with 60.318 million admissions, and it was the first tribute film to pass 3 billion yuan.³ The Numbers records a worldwide gross of $465,488,019, of which about $2.3 million came from North American theaters.¹³

In the China Film Audience Satisfaction Survey for 2019, the film scored 91.0, the highest single-film score in the survey's history to that point, surpassing Wolf Warrior 2's 89.2, and the National Day slate itself set a slate record of 88.6.¹ On the Maoyan ticketing platform it holds a 9.7 audience score.³ Overseas, the film was released in North America, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, and became a cultural event for overseas Chinese communities; Western trade reviews noted that its dense references to Chinese historical moments, such as the Hong Kong handover and the Beijing Olympics, create a high threshold of background knowledge for non-Chinese viewers.¹⁴ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 72 percent critics score from a single listed review.¹⁵

Awards

At the 35th Hundred Flowers Awards in September 2020, the film won Best Film, decided by a jury of 101 audience members, and Han Haolin was nominated for Best Newcomer.⁵^•¹⁶ At the 33rd Golden Rooster Awards in November 2020 it received the Special Jury Prize, with the citation praising it as a template for "new mainstream" cinema that sketched the country's modernization "in a pointillist style" through ordinary lives.⁶^•¹⁷ Zhang Yi won Outstanding Actor and Ren Suxi Outstanding Actress at the Huabiao Film Awards, where the film also won Outstanding Film.¹⁶

Significance and follow-ups

The film is regarded as a turning point for the Chinese "main-melody" (主旋律) patriotic genre: instead of the leader-centered narratives of earlier tribute films, it used a decentralized, ordinary-person perspective, and its commercial success demonstrated that the genre could dominate a holiday market.¹⁸^•¹⁹ Its anthology format was continued in two sequels from overlapping creative teams: My People, My Homeland (2020), a comedy anthology about rural life, and My Country, My Parents (2021).¹³^•²⁰

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026