The Fifth Directors refer to the young directors who graduated from Beijing Film Academy in the 1980s. The works of theirs are subjective, symbolic and referential and they have made great impact on the China film circle. The outstanding representatives of the directors during that period of time are Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Wu Ziniu, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Huang Jianxin. The Fifth Directors are all brilliant and creative and they have created many enjoyable and wonderful films to Chinese audience.

Among the many directors, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou are the most renowned directors whom the ordinary Chinese people are familiar with. Even the foreigners are familiar with the works of the two directors. The foreign viewers who have seen the films by the two directors said that they are impressed by the splendid scenes in the films and when they went school to study in China, the public films in public places would include the films made by the two directors. They said the beautiful and impressive scenes in the films and the Chinese elements they reflected left them a deep impression.

Chen Kaige, the outstanding figure of the Fifth Directors, was born in 1952. From1984, he directed a lot wonderful films in which the most successful one was Farewell My Concubine. The film reflected the vicissitudes of life to present the deliberation and understanding of traditional culture, the survival of human beings and human nature. The film won a lot of fame all over the world. And in on the 46th Cannes Film Festival, it won the Golden Palm Prize. The foreign viewers were all impressed by the theme as well as the presentation of the traditional Beijing operas in the film. They expressed it was hard to learn to speak Chinese, but it was harder to understand the lines of the opera.

The director Chen Kaige is adept in analyzing the restraint and impact of history and tradition on the psychic world of human beings to represent the complexity o human beings. He has a solid understanding of Chinese culture and art, which helps him to create films that reflect the history and culture of China. The films express the pursuit for humanity and aesthetics. He makes use of different kinds of film-making methods to shape his own film style.