Devils On The Doorstep

"A wartime farce alternately comic and gut wrenching." -Joe McGovern, Premiere Magazine

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and banned in its native country, Jiang Wen's ravishingly photographed anti-war epic is set in 1945 in a Japanese-occupied rural Chinese village. Wen stars as Ma Dasan, a peasant, who, one night at gunpoint, is compelled to shelter two prisoners. One is a captured Japanese soldier who wants to be killed, the other his Chinese interpreter, who wants to stay alive. As the days turn into months, Dasan and his fellow villagers keep their unwanted guests hidden from the Japanese , while deciding whether or not to execute their captives. The film's rich, bold cinematography is matched only by its approach to the subject matter, which, in turn, attracted the unwanted attention of the Chinese censors who ultimately banned it from Chinese screens.