16 Facts About Chen Kaige

For Farewell My Concubine, Chen Kaige became the first Chinese director to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Chen Kaige was born in Beijing, China into a family of Changle, Fuzhou origin, and grew up with fellow Fifth Generation alumnus Tian Zhuangzhuang as a childhood friend.

Chen Kaige's father Chen Huai'ai was a well-known director in his own right.

Chen Kaige's mother Liu Yanchi was a senior screenwriter.

In 1969, Chen Kaige became a sent-down youth in Xishuangbanna Agricultural Reclamation Bureau before enlisting in the People's Liberation Army next year.

In 1975, Chen Kaige was discharged from the army and returned to Beijing, where he worked as a worker in Beijing Film Printing Factory.

In 1978 Chen Kaige joined the Beijing Film Academy, where he graduated in 1982.

Chen Kaige followed up the unprecedented success of Farewell My Concubine with Temptress Moon, another period drama starring Leslie Cheung and Gong Li.

In 2002, Chen Kaige made his first, and to-date only, English-language film, Killing Me Softly, a thriller starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes, though it proved to be both a critical and popular disappointment.

Together in the same year, which marked the beginning of his wife Chen Kaige Hong as his producer, is an intimate film about a young violinist and his father, showing the desire of young people to grow according to their spiritual guidance.

In 2005, he directed The Promise, an all-star fantasy wuxia picture, which saw Chen Kaige shifting to a more commercial mindset, regarded by some as a "radical stylistic turn" from his previous works.

In 2008, Chen Kaige directed Forever Enthralled, a biopic of Peking opera artist Mei Lanfang, followed by Sacrifice, a re-imagining of the Chinese play The Orphan of Zhao.

Chen Kaige then directed Legend of the Demon Cat, a big-budget Chinese-Japanese co-production adapted from the novel of the same name by Japanese fantasy novelist Baku Yumemakura.

Since 2019, Chen Kaige directed or produced a series of propaganda films that are sometimes commissioned by the Chinese government, including co-directing The Battle at Lake Changjin, China's highest-grossing film of all time.

From 1991, Chen Kaige lived with Ni Ping, a television personality, in a six-year relationship.

In 1996, Chen Kaige married actress Chen Kaige Hong, who has been his producer since Together.