Set in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution, ‘Wolf Totem’ by Jean-Jacques Annaud is the film adaptation of the best-selling Chinese novel of the same name.
An environmental cautionary tale that pits a pack of wolves against an influx of settlers, the book, published a decade ago, is widely seen as a critique of China’s communist rule and surprised many when it was approved by the censors.
Annaud says he enjoyed complete freedom from Chinese censors in his film adaptation: “From the beginning, I was given what we call “carte blanche”. I wrote the screenplay very freely. It went through the reading bureau without any… They let me free from that screenplay and then I shot very freely. I had no-one to check on me, no-one to check on the dailies. Then I showed the first cut and I didn’t have any negative comments.”
Backed by the state-run China Film Group, the movie deals with conservation themes head on, though it largely avoids the book’s more subtle political issues.
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