Popular Art

On an important Chinese film.

A still from Grandma’s Blue Metal Cabinet Wheelchair (2022)

Welcome! It’s a new Thursday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter — and this one’s about China’s independent animators.

First, we need to thank everyone for the great response to the Nobody issue. The film was a breakout hit from China last year — fresh, different, artful and extremely funny. It’s crowd-pleasing, and yet it talks up to the viewer. Similar to Flow (2024), it pairs ideas from the film-festival world with mass appeal. We loved sharing it last Sunday.

But Nobody didn’t come from nowhere. Chinese Flash set the stage for much of what’s happening in Chinese animation now — as we wrote last month. And Flash wasn’t the only factor, either. To wrap up this informal series on China, there’s one more thing to discuss.

Around four years ago, a film died in Chinese theaters. Its title: To the Bright Side (2022). Despite real praise, audiences didn’t show up. Earnings fell below $250,000 — a colossal failure by the country’s standards.¹

Many had expected To the Bright Side to flop from the outset. Getting it made was close to impossible — investors didn’t want to touch it. Reportedly, even China’s film review board was skeptical. It was a weird gamble: a commercial project made by non-commercial, art-house animators.²

“[T]hese young people do not bow down to money. They keep their own ways and do things that they love,” said Wang Lei, the producer behind To the Bright Side, about the artists who made the film.³ All of those artists came from China’s indie scene. Their past work was often aimed at festivals — not mainstream theaters.

Yet Wang hoped that the project would succeed anyway. His dream was that a film based in reality, “love,” “beauty,” strong storytelling and “local Chinese art form[s]” could cross over — just through its quality. As he explained:

Everyone considers this film an art film, akin to Like the Dyer’s Hand [from 2020], likely to be praised but commercially unsuccessful. However, I believe that a market exists for genuinely emotional and detailed things. Our goal is simple: to create a work that truly resonates with both parents and children. Successful or not, it’s an attempt, and we hope that more people will attempt new things for Chinese animation in the future.