Wolf Totem

Chen Zhen, a student sent from Beijing to Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, starts living among nomadic herders. The place of wolves on the steppe is not what he expects: the herders treat them as both an enemy and a part of the balance. Chen secretly tries to raise a wolf cub, and his collision with the established order begins there. Jean-Jacques Annaud directed. It is a French and Chinese co-production shot on location in Inner Mongolia. The wolves were the heaviest work in it. Annaud spent about four years in China, mostly in Beijing and Inner Mongolia. The Canadian trainer Andrew Simpson brought thirty-five wolves through a training that took years, and two separate packs were used in the scenes. The decision to work with real animals rather than computer-generated wolves determined the entire schedule. That Annaud was working in China at all is its own story. His films had been banned there after Seven Years in Tibet; the ban was lifted conditionally around 2010 following his personal appeals to Chinese officials, and only then did this film become possible. China submitted it for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards, but in October 2015 the Academy disqualified it on the grounds that the creative contribution of Chinese nationals was insufficient. Who it is for: viewers who like nature photography and films made with real animals. Who it is not for: anyone curious about the politics. The film uses the Cultural Revolution as scenery and does not settle accounts with the period.