Chinese cinema in 2017: the best may be an overlooked gem with two boys and a punctured football

China’s turbulent and relentlessly turbocharged film industry has changed much in 2017, something the films shown this year exemplified.

There’s Wolf Warrior 2 , the populist action thriller that devoured all before it during the summer and redefined the way patriotic propaganda films could be made for – and sold to – a new generation of film-goers.

On the flip side is Twenty Two, a documentary about China’s last surviving “comfort women” that is heartbreaking, humanistic and totally devoid of simplistic jingoism.

Meanwhile, the animated feature Have A Nice Day – which was on the receiving end of a media blackout when it debuted in competition at the Berlin Film Festival without official authorisation in February – has since been hailed by the Chinese media (among them the online portal of official mouthpiece People’s Daily) as a showcase of the “new possibilities for Chinese animation films”.

The Chinese animators pushing back against the Hollywood tide

The comically fatalistic underworld tale of an array of gangsters and slackers in a small Chinese city is now slated for general release on January 12.