Name: To Live
Genre: Drama, History / War
Duration: 125 min
Cast: Ge You, Gong Li

BAFTA · 1Cannes · 2

Spoiler-free premise

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.

Read expanded premiseLonger, still spoiler-free

Compulsive gambler Xu Fugui loses his family's home and fortune in 1940s China, forcing wife Jiazhen and their children into hardship. Shadow-puppet work, civil war, Communist victory, and later political campaigns repeatedly reshape the family's attempt simply to endure.

Why it belongs

To Live follows one family through revolution with warmth and devastating restraint, deploying domestic detail and shadow puppetry to humanize historical upheaval.

Read expanded why it belongsThe fuller editorial case

Zhang Yimou's decades-spanning production design and shifting color timing carry gambling halls, shadow-puppet cases, family meals, certificates, uniforms, and changing public slogans through history via ordinary objects—Ge You and Gong Li make endurance active, loving, compromised, and never sentimental.

Major award record

Metadata only · zero points in 40/40/20

BAFTA1 win1995 · official BAFTA 1995 Film Awards results ↗

Plus 1 additional win

No headline-category win to name

Cannes2 wins1994 · official festival record ↗

Award for Best Actor1994 · You GEofficial festival record ↗

Plus 1 additional win

Totals include every recorded competitive win. Only Picture or top-film honors, Direction, Screenplay, and lead or supporting performances are named.

Good for

Film Club

Descriptive guidance derived from rating, genre, runtime, mood, and GCML scores.

To Live

Double Feature