At this point in time, it isn’t too surprising to hear that China has banned an all-new movie. After all, as the United States continues to expand its use of minorities and diverse characters, there are plenty of things that seem to upset countries such as China. This is why we’ve seen films like Thor: Love and Thunder and Lightyear banned from a number of countries. However, it looks like China has now banned one of their own movies – and the reason is currently unknown.
As noted via Gizmodo, a film titled Return to Dust has been “generating buzz in China as a sleeper hit.” Unfortunately, the film “was unceremoniously pulled from streaming services in the country yesterday.” Furthermore, they’ve even revealed that discussing the film on China’s social media platform Weibo has been banned.
The film first debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival in February of this year. It proceeded to earn over $7 million in China at the box office, making the film a gradual success. Nevertheless, it appears that China has now found a reason to have Return to Dust banned altogether. While that reason remains unclear – there are theories as to why. For example, writer and director Li Ruijun has his own suspicions that he revealed to the Economist.
“Everyone knows there are lots of poor people,” he recently explained. “But the government doesn’t want Chinese people to see too much of it.”
While this is a possible reason, and highly likely, there has been no official confirmation yet. In any case, the film can still be located through piracy, so those outside China are able to watch it. Whether or not you condone piracy is up to yourselves, of course, but it could be the only way that such films as these are preserved. Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any potential updates as we have them. It’s definitely going to be an interesting time seeing how people will continue to react to films being banned so frequently these days.