published at that point so Zhang could understand his works. Zhang said when he began reading To Live, one of the works, he was unable to stop reading it. Zhang met with Yu to discuss the script for Mistake at River's Edge, but they kept bringing up To Live. Thus, the two decided to adapt To Live instead. Casting Ge You, known for his comedic roles, was chosen by Zhang Yimou to play the title character, Fugui. Known for poker-faced comedy, he was not accustomed to expressing emotional states this character requires. Thus, he was not very confident in himself, even protesting going to the Cannes Film Festival where he would eventually garner a best actor award. Director Growing up, Zhang spent his youth years through the Cultural revolution. Having personally experienced what it was like in such a time and setting, he had a very strong understanding and emotional connection with Chinese culture and society. As a student who studied screen studies in university in the country’s capital city, he and his peers were heavily exposed to various movies from across the world and across time. His classmate, who is now the President of the Beijing Film Academy stated that during their four years in university, they went through over 500 films spanning from Hollywood films from the 1930s to Italian Neo-Realism films. Zhang Yimou stated in a previous interview that even after many years, he still remembered the culture shock he experienced when first exposed to the wide variety of films. The combination of the two very crucial parts of his life provided him with a very strong vision for his films. He was able to have a very strong understanding of both the Chinese national outlook as well as the international outlook of films and applied them extensively throughout his career. Zhang described that To Live is the film he felt the strongest connection to because of the Cultural Revolution background in the film. The political background of Zhang’s family was the label “double-counterrevolutionary”, which was the worst kind of counterrevolutionary. Different from other fifth-generation filmmakers such as Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang was in a desperate state and cannot trace back things that were lost during the Cultural Revolution. Zhang said “For me, that was an era without hope – I lived in a world of desperation”. Zhang, in an interview, described how he used