The Story of Qiu Ju

The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) is a Zhang Yimou drama starring Gong Li, and you can watch it online on iFILM. One stubborn peasant woman takes on an entire bureaucracy over a single apology.

After the village chief injures her husband in a scuffle, Qiu Ju is offered cash compensation — but the money was never the point. She wants the official to admit he was wrong and say it out loud. Heavily pregnant, she keeps climbing the ladder: from the village to the county town, then on to a sprawling provincial city, office after office, refusing to let go. Gong Li plays her with no glamour at all, weathered and slow on her feet, and you believe every step.

Zhang shot much of it with hidden cameras in real crowds, so it plays almost like a documentary of rural China in the early 1990s. It carried off the Golden Lion at Venice, and Gong Li was named best actress there. Quiet, wry and quietly relentless. Stream The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) online on iFILM.