# Sons (儿子（1996年电影）) (1996 film)
*Sons* (儿子) is a 1996 Chinese docu-drama directed by [Zhang Yuan](https://www.edgepedia.org/zhang-yuan) (张元) in which a real Beijing family, the Lis, plays itself in a reenactment of its own collapse under the father's alcoholism. The four cast members are the father Li Maojie, a retired dancer, the mother Fu Derong, also a former dancer, and their two unemployed sons, Li Ji and Li Wei. The film runs 95 minutes, was shot in color on 35 mm, and won the Tiger Award at the 25th Rotterdam International Film Festival in 1996.[1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) • [2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / screenwriter | Zhang Yuan; screenplay by Ning Dai[1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) |
| Cast | Li Maojie, Fu Derong, Li Ji, and Li Wei, the actual family, playing themselves[1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) |
| Format | 95 minutes, color, 35 mm, Mandarin dialogue[1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) • [3](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E5%85%92%E5%AD%90/4974205) |
| Awards | Tiger Award and FIPRESCI critics' prize, 25th Rotterdam International Film Festival, 1996[4](https://fipresci.org/awards/1996/) • [5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink) |
| Production | Privately financed outside the studio system; production company Face (Beijing Expression) Cultural Communication Center[2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/) • [1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) |
| Chinese release | An underground film, never publicly screened in mainland China at the time[3](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E5%85%92%E5%AD%90/4974205) • [2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/) |
## Spoilers
### Story
The film follows a single household in present-day Beijing. The father, Li Maojie, a former dancer whose stiffening joints forced him to retire, has declined into alcoholism and violence; the Busan festival program also describes him as having been treated in a psychiatric hospital. The mother, Fu Derong, takes extra teaching work to support the household and tries to hold the family together, while the two unemployed sons, Li Ji and Li Wei, drift on the fringes of the city's underground rock scene and resent a father they fear they may come to resemble.[1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) • [6](https://www.timeout.com/movies/sons) Time Out's review describes the film as chronicling episodes in the family's breakdown, with the mutual withholding of love at its center.[6](https://www.timeout.com/movies/sons)
## Origin and production
**The family came to the director.** The project began when Li Wei and Li Ji, who lived in the apartment below Zhang Yuan's, knocked on his door and asked him to film their family's story. Li Wei had acted in Zhang's earlier film *[Beijing Bastards](https://www.edgepedia.org/beijing-bastards)*. According to Zhang's own account, the brothers told him that if he did not film their story he would be a fool, because their family's story was extraordinary. Zhang visited the father, who came out of the psychiatric hospital to meet visitors hopping like a healthy man, and concluded that the father's real problem was simply alcohol; he decided on the spot to make the film.[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink) • [7](https://ent.ifeng.com/movie/duihua/zhangyuan/)
Preparation was unusually short. Zhang has given slightly different figures in different interviews: the Baidu entry says fewer than 10 days elapsed between the decision and shooting, while in a [Phoenix Television](https://www.edgepedia.org/phoenix-television) interview he described completing the script in under a month and starting to shoot with almost no preparation. Ning Dai, Zhang's wife and a screenwriter, took part in writing the script; the family members were interviewed separately first, and the script was then constructed from those interviews.[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink) • [7](https://ent.ifeng.com/movie/duihua/zhangyuan/)
**Borrowing the father.** The father was committed to a psychiatric institution at the time. Zhang had him formally borrowed out of the hospital so that he could play his own role; when filming ended, he was returned to the institution. Zhang later called the making of the film itself a kind of remarkable story. The São Paulo festival archive records that the shoot lasted less than two months and that the process rearticulated the relationships among the protagonists.[7](https://ent.ifeng.com/movie/duihua/zhangyuan/) • [8](https://mostra.org/en/arquivo/filme/3086)
The film was privately financed and made outside the traditional studio system. Zhang has said that films like *Sons*, *Beijing Bastards*, and *East Palace, West Palace* could not be publicly released in China at the time, and the film circulated as an underground work.[2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/) • [9](https://www.imaschina.com/article/29785.html)
## Style: between fiction and documentary
*Sons* straddles the line between fiction and documentary. The four "actors" are the actual family members reenacting their own lives, and scholars of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers cite it as an extreme case in which the boundary between narrative film and documentary becomes very fuzzy.[2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/) • [10](https://cmsw.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/146381124-Qi-Wang-Negotiating-Realists-The-Sixth-Generation-of-Chinese-Filmmakers.pdf) A Letterboxd review notes that it is impossible to know how many of the more abrasive moments are fiction, reenactment, or pure documentary, and that the film is said to be a combination of all three.[11](https://letterboxd.com/samcmac/film/sons-1996/)
Zhang's approach continued the documentary methods he had used in *Beijing Bastards*: natural light, deep-focus compositions, and long takes, with dialogue drawn from the family's everyday speech. He described his aim as discarding the artist's subjective viewpoint and concentrating on accurately describing the reality that had first interested him, valuing content over technique.[12](https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/server/api/core/bitstreams/256d814f-1555-466b-a06b-eede17c4e9db/content) During shooting Zhang became so accepted by the family that they forgot the cameras were present; he once had to intervene in an argument before the "actors" injured each other.[2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/)
## Reception and festival history
At the 25th Rotterdam International Film Festival in 1996, *Sons* won the Tiger Award, the festival's top prize, and a FIPRESCI prize from the international film critics' federation.[4](https://fipresci.org/awards/1996/) • [5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink) The film screened in the "A Window on Asian Cinema" section of the first Busan International Film Festival in 1996, at the 20th Hong Kong International Film Festival in 1996, and later internationally, including a Harvard Film Archive tribute to Zhang Yuan in November 1999 and a New York screening in 2001.[1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) • [13](https://www.cefc.com.hk/download.php?file=4653eb2f486d5e0157e8a9dd0c604364&id=100044264) • [14](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/visiting-directorsa-tribute-to-zhang-yuan) • [2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/)
Though never screened publicly in its native China in that period, the film helped cement Zhang Yuan's reputation abroad as a major creative force in Chinese cinema.[2](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/) The San Sebastián festival's FIPRESCI notes remarked on the director's resourcefulness in making the feature at all, given the government ruling that had curtailed his professional activity; in 1994 Chinese authorities had banned Zhang and several other filmmakers from making films, and his directing credentials were restored in 1997.[15](https://sansebastianfestival.com/1996/sections_and_films/fipresci_95_96/7/440195/in) • [7](https://ent.ifeng.com/movie/duihua/zhangyuan/)
**Dating.** Sources disagree on the film's year. Chinese reference entries list it as a 1995 production released in mainland China in 1995, while international festival catalogs, including Busan, São Paulo, and the FIPRESCI awards list, date it 1996, the year of its [Rotterdam](https://www.edgepedia.org/rotterdam) prize.[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink) • [1](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118) • [4](https://fipresci.org/awards/1996/)
## Place in Zhang Yuan's career
*Sons* belongs to the early run of Zhang Yuan's independent films about people on the margins of Chinese society, following *Mama* (1990), about a mother and her developmentally challenged son, and *Beijing Bastards* (1992), about underground rock musicians, and preceding *East Palace, West Palace* (1996).[16](https://mulanfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/mulan_programme_book_2019.pdf) The writer [Wang Shuo](https://www.edgepedia.org/wang-shuo), quoted in a Chinese film database, called *Sons* Zhang Yuan's best film, describing a camera that pins itself to a suffering family with no music and seemingly no editing, and said the film had cleanly shocked him.[17](https://www.iqiyi.com/dianying/yjc-movie.html) A Sohu Entertainment assessment, cited in the Baidu entry, described the film as showing a family being destroyed step by step and as evidence of Zhang's continuing attention to disadvantaged groups.[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
## References
1. [Sons, Busan International Film Festival archive, 1st (1996) A Window on Asian Cinema](https://biff.kr/eng/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=303&page=1&pyear=1996&sec=118)
2. [Sons, China-Underground Movie Database](https://china-underground.com/wp/movies/sons/)
3. [兒子 (1993年中國電影), 中文百科全書](https://www.newton.com.tw/wiki/%E5%85%92%E5%AD%90/4974205)
4. [Festival Awards 1996, FIPRESCI, The International Federation of Film Critics](https://fipresci.org/awards/1996/)
5. [儿子（1995年张元执导的电影）, 百度百科](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E5%84%BF%E5%AD%90/4974205?fromModule=lemma_inlink)
6. [Sons 1996, directed by Zhang Yuan, Time Out film review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/sons)
7. [凤凰电影对话导演张元, 凤凰网娱乐](https://ent.ifeng.com/movie/duihua/zhangyuan/)
8. [Sons (1996), Mostra Internacional de Cinema em São Paulo archive](https://mostra.org/en/arquivo/filme/3086)
9. [张元：我的电影是从真实生活当中去找, 依马狮视听工场](https://www.imaschina.com/article/29785.html)
10. [Qi Wang, Negotiating Realists: The Sixth Generation of Chinese Filmmakers, MIT](https://cmsw.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/146381124-Qi-Wang-Negotiating-Realists-The-Sixth-Generation-of-Chinese-Filmmakers.pdf)
11. [Sons review by Sam C. Mac, Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/samcmac/film/sons-1996/)
12. [Documentary methods in Zhang Yuan's Beijing Bastards, NTU digital repository](https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/server/api/core/bitstreams/256d814f-1555-466b-a06b-eede17c4e9db/content)
13. [Sons (Erzi), 20th Hong Kong International Film Festival listing, China Perspectives](https://www.cefc.com.hk/download.php?file=4653eb2f486d5e0157e8a9dd0c604364&id=100044264)
14. [A Tribute to Zhang Yuan, Harvard Film Archive, November 1999](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/visiting-directorsa-tribute-to-zhang-yuan)
15. [Erzi (Sons), 1996 FIPRESCI 1995/96, San Sebastián Film Festival](https://sansebastianfestival.com/1996/sections_and_films/fipresci_95_96/7/440195/in)
16. [About the Director, Mulan Festival programme book (2019)](https://mulanfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/mulan_programme_book_2019.pdf)
17. [元剧场-元影-高清视频在线观看, 爱奇艺](https://www.iqiyi.com/dianying/yjc-movie.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Documentary films by subject: people, identity, and communities*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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