troupe director. Alla Shcherbakova as Anna, a Russian immigrant and performer at World Park. Han Sanming as Sanming, a relative of Little Sister who comes to Beijing after his death to help his family collect compensation. Sanming reappears in Still Life, Jia's follow-up to The World, this time as a lead actor. Production The World was a joint-production by Jia Zhangke's own Xstream Pictures, Japan's Office Kitano, and France's Lumen Films. It received additional financial support from the Shanghai Film Studio and several Japanese corporations including Bandai Visual and Tokyo FM, among others. The film's nascence began after Jia had lived in Beijing for several years in 2000. After two films based in his native province of Shanxi, Jia decided to make a film about his impressions of Beijing as a world city, after a cousin back home asked him about life in a metropolitan environment. Jia, however, would not began writing the screenplay until after the release of his next film Unknown Pleasures, in 2003 during the SARS outbreak. The screenplay took approximately a year to write, over which time the story slowly changed, such that it became harder to distinguish the fact that it took place in Beijing, and the focus of the setting shifted to that of any large city with many migrants in it. Filming of The World took place on location at the actual Beijing World Park, as well as at an older but similar park, Window of the World, that sometimes served as a stand-in and is located in the southern city of Shenzhen. The World sets the scene in a World park in Beijing, the capital of China, to present China’s desires and ongoing process of becoming a new global center, and the famous buildings from different countries of smaller sizes are to show a united and harmonious world. Jia is a migrant from Fenyang, Shanxi to Beijing, in his interview he said he “wants to focus on my viewpoint on big cities”. This miniature of a world inside the park presents the migrants wave as a significant global issue. Legitimization As Jia Zhangke's first film made with the consent of the Chinese Film Bureau, many felt that Jia's hand would be unduly restricted by Communist bureaucrats. As it turned out, Jia claimed that the main impact of government approval was the ability to screen abroad and at home without major obstacles; Jia