Though novelist/filmmaker Sijie Dai resides in France and shot his latest movie in Vietnam, he says he will continue to make movies in China because, "I can't think of doing otherwise. It is after all, my country despite our differences."
Indeed, Dai has always had a love-hate relationship with his home country. A teenager during the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to work as a farmhand as part of a government "re-education" program and had all his books burned besides a few volumes of Balzac and Camus.
Now a widely read author in both France and China (he writes mainly in French), and recognized as one of the most important Chinese filmmakers of his generation (he shares the honors with Cheng Kaige and Zhang Yimou), Dai still has a lot of trouble getting permission to film inside China or releasing his films there. His latest, "Les filles du botaniste (The Chinese Botanist's Daughters)," is set in 1980s China, when society was still entrenched in the rigors of the Cultural Revolution. Dai observes that in many ways, and despite the huge economic progress, the "cultural climate" in China remains unchanged. Accordingly, "Les Filles" was banned from public viewing in the country.