By turns an elaborate wartime drama of China, suffering under Japanese occupation during the 1930s and 40s, and an absurdist comedy of madness, cultural disconnects and historical booby-traps that Samuel Beckett would recognize in an instant. The devils in question are the Japanese, but it’s clear that director Jiang Wen is less interested in settling scores than in painting a complex picture of human frailty and vulnerability, especially in time of war. He begins by dumping two prisoners of the anti-Japanese resistance into the lap of some hapless Chinese peasants who are ordered to care for them indefinitely. The Japanese prisoner wants only to be killed to save face; his Chinese translator/collaborator wants only to survive (thus he mistranslates his boss’s hysterical invective). The peasants want only to be rid of these crazed prisoners and their impossible demands. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize, Cannes 2000.

Born into an army family in Tangshan, Hebei Province in January 1963. He joined his father in Beijing at the age of six and showed an interest in acting from an early age. Until the age of ten, he was known as Jiang Xiaojun. He entered China's foremost acting school, the Central Academy of Drama, in 1980. After graduating in 1984 he was assigned to the China Youth Theatre, and gave many stage performances with the troupe. He began acting in films the following year. Since 1996, he has been a professor and researcher at his own alma mater, the Central Academy of Drama.

His performances for other directors have won him numerous awards at home and abroad, but it was his starring role in the TV series A Beijinger in New York which made him one of the best-loved Chinese actors of his generation.

He wrote and directed his own first film in 1994. IN THE HEAT OF THE SUN, adapted from a novel by Wang Shuo, which won 'Best Actor' prize at the Venice Film Festival for its young lead Xia Yu and numerous other prizes, including 'Best Feature' at the Singapore Film Festival and six Golden Horse awards in Taiwan. It was cited by Richard Corliss in Time as the best film of 1995.

To the average Chinese peasant, foreigners were always ?devils? ? potentially dangerous outsiders who arrived on Chinese soil with dubious motives and nefarious intent. That was especially true of the Japanese soldiers who invaded China in the 1930s, first annexing Manchuria and then occupying large tracts of the mainland.

Ma Dasan and his neighbours in Rack-Armour Terrace resented giving a percentage of their grain harvest to the Japanese ?devils?, but otherwise co-existed with them quite peacefully.

Things began to change the night when two prisoners of the anti-Japanese resistance were dumped on Ma Dasan?s doorstep. One was the a Japanese soldier, the other a Chinese translator/collaborator. Ma was told to keep them hidden for a few days. But the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks stretched into months. Unwilling to keep the prisoners any longer and unable to execute them, Ma Dasan came up with the idea of returning them to the Japanese army in exchange for two carts of grain.

The outcome of his scheme taught him the hard way that ?devils? are not necessarily foreign ? and that war can turn the best of men into the worst.