The film Return to Dust, which narrates the experiences of a couple in a poor rural environment, has been withdrawn from the video platforms that hosted it, Internet users reported in the last hours on the country’s social networks.
The film arrived in early August on three major Chinese online video platforms, Youku, Iqiyi and Tencent Video, where it can no longer be found.
The film, shot on a low budget and performed mostly by non-professional actors, focuses on a couple living in the western province of Gansu, in the interior of the country, and their harsh living conditions.
Directed by Li Ruijun, it had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and hit the Chinese box office in July, where it performed well after two months of screening, grossing 113 million yuan (15.9 million dollars, 16.2 million euros).
In recent months, the film has been the subject of debate on Chinese social media, with some users accusing the director of “romanticizing poverty” or even deliberately creating a “false and ugly image” of China in order to “win an award in West”.
On the contrary, others applauded the “bravery” of the author and recalled that there is a rural China far from “the prosperity of the coastal cities.”
In February 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping officially declared that the country had completed its “hard task” of eradicating extreme poverty.
In the absence of an official explanation for his removal from video portals, some commentators blamed it on his portrayal of poverty in China: “If criticism is prohibited, do flattery make sense?”, a network user questioned. social Weibo, similar to Twitter, inaccessible in the Asian country.
The Chinese authorities or sometimes the platforms and distributors themselves tend to censor nudity, political content considered sensitive or sexual scenes.
“Does our entertainment industry have any future?” lamented one Internet user.
