Wolf Totem screened in DC

By Hua Shengdun in Washington (China Daily USA)

Updated: 2015-08-26

French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, bring his latest film Wolf Totem to Washington, DC on August 20. Andi Zhang / For China Daily

French director Jean-Jacques Annaud brought his latest movie, Wolf Totem, to Washington for a screening and it was a success.

The film is a Chinese-French co-produced adaptation of Chinese author Jiang Rong's best-selling novel of the same name, about a young Beijing student who is sent to Inner Mongolia to teach nomadic herdsmen and becomes fascinated by wolves.

A more than 400-page novel, adapting the story to film was no easy task, but Annaud said he did it through his own "mental process".

"You see the book, you build your own images," he said. "But in a two-hour movie, it is a much more emotional process. There are things you can read, but your eyes and heart refuse to see. There are some elements I can't shoot, it is a selection process."

"In my film, I like to give you hope in the end," Annaud said.

"It is a wonderful adventure," he added. "There are no regrets but much pleasure and pride."

As Jean-Jacques Annaud's second movie made in cooperation with China, he considers Wolf Totem his most important so far. It made him reject any other projects for five years.

"The story is very close to my own life," Annaud said. "I was sent to Cameroon to teach cinema at the same age."

The novel reminded Annaud of the time he spent in a village in West Africa, an unfamiliar land that he ended up falling in love with.

"The story of young man, a student, from the capital, going to a remote country, and opening his heart to a different civilization, different people, a different language was a phenomenal moment for me," Annaud said.

On the top of his personal connection to the story, Annaud said another important aspect of Wolf Totem is the theme of environmental protection.

"I felt the novel makes a very powerful case for nature conservation, and we all know China has a nature conservation problem," said Annaud.

"I was very happy to be part of an effort to help make the Chinese public better understand that something has to be done to protect the beauty of China," Annaud said.

"Wolf Totem is an important novel," Annaud emphasized. "It deals with many aspects of Chinese culture. And it deals with massive problems that China has an awareness something has to be done about - for nature. I was honored to be part of something that is bigger than a movie."

Andi Zhang contributed to the story.