Watch: Jia Zhangke takes on China’s toxic smog in new short film for Greenpeace

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke focuses on China’s noxious haze in a stunning new documentary short he created for Greenpeace East Asia. “Smog Journeys” follows the lives of two families—one a mining family in Hebei province and the other a trendy, middle-class couple and their son in Beijing—each of whom “face a similar fate.”
“The original idea sounded a bit like Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, hypothetically putting people into different age groups, demonizing the smog into some sort of monster and then beating the monster with all kinds of kung fu styles. I thought the idea was clever and pretty interesting,” Jia said.
He explained that his goal was to make a film that “enlightens people, not frightens them.”
“The issue of smog is something that all the citizens of the country need to face, understand and solve in the upcoming few years”.