Director provides cold, hard facts about life in rural China

Mainland director Wang Chao is sitting huddled behind a monitor, swaddled in a standard issue PLA overcoat with a baseball cap pulled firmly over his head. It's only October, but thickly padded army overcoats - the type designed to keep out northern China's freezing winters - have become essential on the set on Wang's new film, Day & Night, which is shooting near Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. It snowed heavily last night and today a piercing wind seems to be blowing in directly from the Siberian steppe.

But the group of extras Wang is shooting seems impervious to the bone-cracking chill. This is their home after all - they're all local farmers and miners - and as far as they're concerned the winter hasn't even started. They also seem invigorated by the appearance of a film crew in their remote village. In the scene Wang is shooting, they've been asked to smile and laugh as they're being handed a Spring Festival bonus by their boss, the owner of the local mine. You get the impression they don't have to act too hard.

'We were lucky to find this location,' says Wang. 'There's a small village here and an abandoned mine, so we had some infrastructure to build on, but it's not too industrial. Although the story is set around a mine, we wanted to portray a rural, natural environment and that's exactly what we've been able to achieve.'

Set in modern-day China, Day & Night is a 'rags-to-riches' story about a country boy, Guangsheng, who takes over a mine that has been closed following an accident and turns it into a prosperous business. The young miner becomes rich - he can even afford a new house and a car - but finds he can't enjoy his new-found wealth. His 'master' - the man he served as an apprentice - was killed in the blast that initially closed the mine and Guangsheng is wracked with guilt because he was having an affair with the man's wife. The film deals with his long search for redemption.

Wang, a former assistant to Fifth Generation director Chen Kaige, was hailed as a major new talent following his first film, The Orphan Of Anyang, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. Critics agreed that the film - shot in ultra-long takes with non-professional actors - stood out from other Chinese art movies due to its distinctive visual style and dry sense of humour. It went on to screen at festivals worldwide and won several prizes.

Day & Night, Wang's second film, is produced and financed by China's Laurel Films, which produced The Orphan Of Anyang, and French production company Rosem Films, which has also co-produced Fruit Chan Kuo's Hollywood Hong Kong and, more recently, Carol Lai Miu-suet's The Floating Landscape. This time around Wang has opted to use professional actors along with a large number of extras. Wang Lan, who plays the widow, is probably the best known of the five cast members after starring in a string of mainland films in the 1990s including Huang Jianxin's The Wooden Man's Bride. The other actors - including Beijing Film Academy graduate Liu Lei who plays Guangsheng - have mostly worked in theatre and television.