Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke (born 1970 in Fenyang, Shanxi) is the defining figure of Chinese independent cinema — the leading voice of the “Sixth Generation” whose patient, documentary-inflected features chronicle ordinary lives amid China’s breakneck transformation. Platform (2000), Still Life (winner of the Golden Lion at Venice in 2006), A Touch of Sin (2013), Ash Is Purest White (2018) and Caught by the Tides (2024) made him a fixture of the international festival circuit and one of the most acclaimed directors alive.

Use it first to understand it

At a Venice Film Festival masterclass in August 2025, Jia said embracing new technology is part of a filmmaker’s journey and revealed he had made a five-minute short with AI to experiment with it. He offered a characteristically precise metaphor: filming with AI is like playing chess at home in front of a computer, while traditional shooting is an outdoor activity — like climbing a mountain or going out to observe people. Filmmakers, he stressed, need not adopt every technology; what matters is how you want to tell the story.

He then went further than talk. At Hong Kong’s Filmart in March 2026, Jia presented two AI shorts — one made in three days with ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 model, featuring two AI-generated versions of Jia himself, alongside “Wheat Harvest,” made with the Kling model. He told the audience he faces new technology “without making premature judgments,” using it first to understand it, and cautioned both camps of the AI debate: don’t rush to protest, and don’t rush to invest — real issues will be worked out through legislation.

Notably, when asked whether his next feature would use AI, his answer was a flat no: the shorts were an inquiry, not a career change. His experiments mirror a broader turn in Chinese cinema, where peers like Zhang Yimou have built AI teams directly into blockbuster productions.