Zhao Tao
Also Known As: 赵涛
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Zhao Tao (Chinese: 赵涛, born 28 January 1977) is a famous Chinese actress, work in China and Europe, she has over 10 films to her credit since starting her career in 1999, muse of director Jia Zhangke. Zhao first came into international prominence through close collaboration with Chinese director Jia Zhangke and is credited with helping to bring Chinese cinema to Europe, especially Italy. As Shun Li in Io sono Li, her best starring role to date, she became the first Asian actress to win a prize at David di Donatello. Zhao's native language is Jinese, but she is multilingual, having learned to speak Italian, Mandarin and Szechuanese. Biography She was born January 28, 1977, in Taiyuan, Shanxi, which is also the hometown of the heroine in Still Life. As a child, she studied classical Chinese dance. In 1996, she enrolled in the folk dance department at Beijing Dance Academy. After graduation, she became a dance teacher in Taiyuan Normal College, where she was spotted by Jia during casting for Platform. Since then they work frequently together. In 2011 she starred in the Italian movie Shun Li and the Poet by Andrea Segre, the movie was screened in the Venice Days section of the 68th Venice International Film Festival. Zhao won the David di Donatello Award, the Italian Oscar, for Best Actress for her bilingual role.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Taiyuan - Shanxi - China
Adult: No
Birthday: January 28, 1977
Age: 48 years old
Gender: Female
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Known For:
I Wish I Knew
Overview: Focuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2010-07-02
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Still Life
Overview: A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2006-11-16
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The World
Overview: At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2004-09-01
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24 City
Overview: As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.
Genres: Drama Documentary
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2008-09-27
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Black Breakfast
Overview: Short-movie from Stories on Human Rights, 2008.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2008-10-23
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Walking on the Wild Side
Overview: Han Jie’s feature debut draws on his own experiences growing up in a desolate mining district in northern China’s Shanxi province. A Chinese road movie, Walking on the Wild Side charts a young gang’s continuous flights from one kind of trouble to the next. Mirroring the stark and barren landscape, the film relays the grim story of these delinquents’ dreams of liberty and easy money. Played by nonprofessional actors who are real life troublemakers, the film offers a realism that is at once oppressive, cruel, and sympathetic.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2006-03-24
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Unknown Pleasures
Overview: Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2002-06-06
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Platform
Overview: China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.
Genres: Drama History
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2001-08-29
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Caught by the Tides
Overview: Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2024-11-22
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A Touch of Sin
Overview: Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence.
Genres: Drama Crime
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2013-10-04
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Cry Me a River
Overview: An ancestral city; through its delicious botanical garden and its branched canals, we observe the clues and traces of its ancient culture. Two couples of men and women, former lovers, meet again one year later. The yesterday's breath of youth is still perceptible in their conversations. Is it still possible for us to love? Does youth really have an end? Like the networks linking the old city, what type of ecological existence does their culture require?
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2008-07-11
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Our Ten Years
Overview: Throughout ten years of a key era in Chinese and Hong Kong history, a girl becomes fixated on a fellow commuter who she observes regularly. While the two never speak to one another, the girl captures her appearance and life changes during the years through various means such as photos and drawings.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2007-09-29
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Remembrance
Overview: Jia Zhangke’s short for Modern Weekly’s special tenth anniversary issue.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2008-11-29
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Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang
Overview: Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns to the shooting locations of his films, along with his actors, friends and close collaborators. Jia recalls the inspiration sources for his movies, such as Platform, Still Life and A Touch of Sin. The film is the memory of a filmmaker and of a country in convulsion, China, which reveals itself little by little.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: pt
Release Date: 2014-10-20
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Mountains May Depart
Overview: The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.
Genres: Romance Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2015-10-30
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Smog Journeys
Overview: Jia Zhangke's short film for Greenpeace East Asia depicts the effects of air pollution in northeast China, a region frequently blanketed in dangerous levels of air pollution. 'Smog Journeys' traces two families from two different backgrounds; one a mining family in Hebei province, and the other a trendy middle class family in Beijing. Both face a similar fate. Air pollution is one of China's most pressing environmental and health issues. Greenpeace calls for a shift from coal to clean renewable energy, as well as short term measures that better safeguard people's health.
Genres: Family Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2015-01-22
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3.11 A Sense of Home
Overview: In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.
Genres: Animation Drama Documentary
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 2011-09-11
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Ten Thousand Waves
Overview: TEN THOUSAND WAVES is a 9-screen installation shot on location in China. The work poetically weaves together stories linking China’s ancient past and present. Through an architectural installation, the work explores the movement of people across countries and continents and meditates on unfinished journeys. Conceived and made over four years, TEN THOUSAND WAVES sees Julien collaborating with some of China’s leading artistic voices, including the legendary siren of Chinese cinema Maggie Cheung; rising star of Chinese film Zhao Tao; poet Wang Ping; master calligrapher Gong Fagen; artist Yang Fudong; acclaimed cinematographer Zhao Xiaoshi; and a 100-strong Chinese cast and crew. The film’s original musical score is by fellow East Londoner Jah Wobble and The Chinese Dub Orchestra and contemporary classical composer Maria de Alvear.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2010-10-13
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Where Has Time Gone?
Overview: A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.
Genres: Romance Drama Science Fiction Comedy
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2017-10-19
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Ash Is Purest White
Overview: Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
Genres: Crime Romance Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2018-09-21
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Revive
Overview: Revive is one of five short films within the Jia Zhangke-produced omnibus film Where Has Time Gone? with contributions from each of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). In Jia’s segment, a Chinese couple in the ancient town of Pingyao attempts to breathe new life into their old love as they ponder having a second child. Pingyao, home to the film festival Jia has co-founded, is a highly picturesque UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Jia humorously plays with a very recent dilemma – the second child policy dates from only 2013 – in a setting itself forcibly revived from history.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2017-06-15
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An Elephant Sitting Still
Overview: In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
Release Date: 2018-12-14
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Shun Li and the Poet
Overview: A study of the friendship between a Chinese woman and a fisherman who came to Italy from Yugoslavia many years ago, who live in a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: it
Release Date: 2011-09-23
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Untitled Jia Zhangke Film
Overview: Jia Zhangke told Deadline that he was set to begin production on his next film in October or November 2024, which will be a “road, travelogue film” following a “female character who will travel from a place that is extremely cold, to a place that is extremely warm.”
Genres: Drama
Original Language: zh
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