Zhao Tao
Actor · b. 1977 · Taiyuan - Shanxi - China
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.
Movies20
Movie7.2DramaRomanceA 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.
Movie7.2CrimeDramaFour people in different provinces are driven to violent ends: An angry miner is enraged by corruption in his village. A migrant discovers the possibilities of owning a firearm. A receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one job to the next.
Movie6.9CrimeRomanceSet 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.
Movie6.7DramaYears 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.
Movie7.0DramaRomanceThe life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.
Movie7.0DramaAs 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.
Movie7.0DramaAt 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.
Movie2.0DramaA woman travels from southern China to Turin, Italy, to see her husband. But an unexpected departure leaves her to find herself again, and to find cinema.
Movie7.1DramaHistoryChina’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.
Movie6.5AnimeAnimationIn 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.
3.11 A Sense of Home Films
2011 · 2 votes
Movie6.5ComedyDramaTwo 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.
Movie7.0DramaA 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.
Movie6.5DramaHan 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.
Movie6.6DocumentaryHistoryFocuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day.
Movie6.9DocumentaryChinese 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.
Movie6.0DramaRomanceAn 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?
Movie5.6FamilyDramaJia 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.
Movie5.5RomanceDramaA 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.
Movie6.0DramaThroughout 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.
Movie8.0DocumentaryJia Zhangke’s short for Modern Weekly’s special tenth anniversary issue.