Movies: Ai Weiwei

Twenty years after China’s scandalous “Black Blood Economy,” when a million Chinese citizens were infected with HIV and countless died from AIDS, thousands of rural peasants still suffer the consequences, their plight hidden from the eyes of the worl...

The Shanghai authorities rejected Feng Zhenghu, originated from Wenzhou, Jiejiang, China, from returning to the country for a total of eight times in 2009. On November 4, 2009, Feng Zhenghu attempted to return home for the ninth time but the police f...

Early in 2008, the district government of Jiading, Shanghai invited Ai Weiwei to build a studio in Malu Township, as a part of the local government's efforts in developing its cultural assets. By August 2010, the Ai Weiwei Shanghai Studio completed a...

Ai Weiwei is a global star and an enigma. DW followed him for a year for this intimate portrait. The film shows Ai Weiwei at home, at work, and on the road for work, as he prepares his latest series of works focused on refugees and their fates....

Art is a tool to set up new questions. An interview with Ai Weiwei about the work behind is installation "Sunflower Seeds", on display at Tate Modern from 12 October 2010 to 2 May 2011. Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each appa...

Since an attack on students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in 2014 resulted in six deaths and in the forced disappearance of 43, the students’ families have been living in limbo with their unanswered questions, their struggle embodying the...

As a sequel to Ai Weiwei’s film "Disturbing the Peace," the film "So Sorry" (named after the artist’s 2009 exhibition in Munich, Germany) shows the beginnings of the tension between Ai Weiwei and the Chinese Government. In "So Sorry," you see the inv...

Europe's refugees are met at eye level in a film by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who defends the ideals of humanism in the midst of the crisis....

In June 2008, Yang Jia carried a knife, a hammer, a gas mask, pepper spray, gloves and Molotov cocktails to the Zhabei Public Security Branch Bureau and killed six police officers, injuring another police officer and a guard. He was arrested on the s...

Ping’an yueqing investigates the 2010 death of Qian Yunhui, a village leader from Yueqing in the eastern province of Zhejiang, who died under suspicious circumstances that authorities deemed a road accident. The film recounts Qian’s death in which he...

In the summer of 2010, the Chinese government began a crackdown on dissent, and Hua Hao Yue Yuan documents the stories of Liu Dejun and Liu Shasha, whose activism and outspoken attitude led them to violent abuse from the authorities. On separate occa...

On December 15, 2008, a citizens' investigation began with the goal of seeking an explanation for the casualties of the Sichuan earthquake that happened on May 12, 2008. The investigation covered 14 counties and 74 townships within the disaster zone,...

Opera in three acts (1926) New Production! Celebrated contemporary artist Ai Weiwei makes his operatic debut with a new reading of Puccini’s fairy tale of misdirected love, exile and rule by decree. It’s a fitting project for Weiwei, famous for geop...

The Bazhou police wrongfully arrested seven people without any evidence around September 16, 2001, for their involvement in the murders of two families. The police have long been suspected of abusing their authority, using “Third Degree” techniques a...

"Ordos 100" provides a picture of an Ai Weiwei at the pinnacle of his artistic fame, but not yet in the political hot water that was to give him a different kind of notoriety. The film centers on a grand architecture project in Ordos, to be designed ...

On May 12, 2008, Sichuan province suffered a devastating earthquake with thousands of deaths and many more injured and displaced. School buildings constructed from substandard materials, by corrupt government officials and contractors, collapsed, cau...

Ai Weiwei’s Appeal ¥15,220,910.50 opens with Ai Weiwei’s mother at the Venice Biennial in the summer of 2013 examining Ai’s large S.A.C.R.E.D. installation portraying his 81 day imprisonment. The documentary goes onto chronologically reconstruct the ...

Beijing: The Second Ring is a document of the two opposite views of traffic flow on 33 bridges along Beijing’s Second Ring. The entire piece is made up of 66 segments....

Ai Weiwei examines our relationship with animals, from China and Egypt to the Danish mink farms. At times violent, always thought-provoking - and above all, a mirror image of ourselves....

A short documentary about the making of "Straight" and "Forge" (2008-2012)....