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Editor's Note: The year 2020, marred by the COVID-19 pandemic, was a tough year for the global film industry. The Chinese film industry was the one which got hit first. To protect people's health, and to prevent gatherings in confined places, in case of cluster infections, China's cinemas were shut down from Jan. 23 for months and lost the chance to profit, including the normally prosperous Spring Festival film season. However, with effective prevention and control measures, China started to gradually reopen cinemas from July 20 on. By Dec. 31, 2020, China's box office total surpassed 20 billion yuan ($3 billion), and became the biggest film market in the world, according to Beacon, the Alibaba-owned box office tracker and big data platform. At the same time, a great amount of online contents including films and series, were produced and released, gradually changing and reshaping people's film-watching habits and the entertainment industry, if not forever. Let's review the best ten Chinese films in this extraordinary year.
# "The Eight Hundred"
A poster of "The Eight Hundred" [Image courtesy of Huayi Brothers Media]
The great failures in World War II was turned into a great success both at the box office and among critics. This film, directed by Guan Hu, tells how, in 1937, hundreds of Chinese soldiers fought under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army. The film vividly reflects the war's cruelty and human nature under adverse conditions. Its worldwide total gross was $461 million and it was the highest-grossing film in the world in 2020, which is the first time for a Chinese film to earn this accolade; even Hollywood blockbusters can't dethrone it.
