Do we like them?

Do we like Zhang Yimou?

Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words of his own turned up and he took his lumps over the one-child fine, but he keeps doing state-backed spectacle and the good record is thin.

Zhang Yimou is one of the biggest names in Chinese cinema, a winner of top prizes at Berlin, Venice and Cannes. He also directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Games. Busan's festival has called him a master director celebrated by critics worldwide.

His biggest personal stoush was the one-child policy. Chinese authorities fined him 7.5 million yuan in January 2014 for breaching it, after he had apologised the month before and said he would accept any punishment. The fine was worked out from his and his wife's income, and he was given 30 days to pay.

Then there's censorship. His Cultural Revolution drama One Second was pulled from the 2019 Berlin festival, which cited technical difficulties, though critics quoted by RFA tied it to censorship. Asked later about its fate, Zhang said he hoped it could be seen by everyone as soon as possible. That reads more like a man working inside the system than one fighting it.

Now the harm check. Nothing turned up in his own words against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and he defended casting Matt Damon in The Great Wall by saying the role wasn't written for a Chinese actor. The asterisk is that he has repeatedly run patriotic state spectacles, and in 2019 said he felt an unshirkable duty towards such events. How you weigh that depends on whether you see it as a working artist's duty or as lending polish to a government's image.

Lately he made Scare Out, his first contemporary national security film, a counterintelligence thriller that opened in February 2026. It took 276 million yuan on its mainland opening day, per Maoyan. That's a state-friendly subject, but nothing in it suggests harm to any group, and we found no charity record to set against it.

So: a gifted, cautious operator who took his fine on the chin and has said nothing nasty about anyone. We'd happily watch his films, with an eyebrow raised at the ceremonies. The record on who he has stood up for at a cost to himself is honestly thin.