Dying to Survive

Cheng Yong sells virility remedies in Shanghai and his business is failing. A customer with cancer brings him a proposal: import a leukaemia drug made in India, far cheaper than the licensed one in China, and sell it. The drug is unlicensed there, which makes it smuggling. He starts for the money and becomes, over time, the only route patients have. Wen Muye directs, in his first feature. Xu Zheng plays Cheng Yong. The story is real. A man named Lu Yong, himself a leukaemia patient, supplied a generic drug from India to thousands of patients for years and was prosecuted for smuggling. The case was dropped after public reaction. The effect the film had in China went past cinema. It took over three billion yuan, and during its run a national argument opened about drug pricing and patent regulation; the government moved to reduce the price of cancer drugs and widen reimbursement. Its language moves between comedy and tragedy, deliberately. Wen Muye keeps the first half light and drops the full weight onto the patients in the second. Who it is for: viewers interested in social drama built on real events and in contemporary Chinese cinema. Who it is not for: the final section pushes the emotional register very hard, and the critique of the system turns at some point into a story of individual sacrifice.