Chinese actor bags top award

Huang Bo won the Golden Goblet Award for Best Actor at the 20th Shanghai International Film Festival. The jury praised his performance in the film The Conformist, saying that there was "a minimalism to his expression of complex emotions and thought in this intense observational narrative".

The 43-year-old started his career as a pop singer in the early 1990s and made his big screen debut in 2000. His first major breakthrough took place in 2006 when he played a gangster named Hei Pi in Crazy Stone by director Ning Hao.

The Conformist, directed by Cai Shangjun, is a crime thriller set on the Sino-Russian border where despite the extreme cold, people make quick fortunes through smuggling and other illicit businesses.

Huang spoke with journalists via WeChat about the award-winning film and said: "I got to know quite a lot about gangsters and gained some understanding of their existence. I am pleased to win the award because every prize is an affirmation of my craft."

Huang added that he had intentionally taken a step back from the heated film market in the past two years because he felt "a kind of crisis" and was dissatisfied with himself for "making one film after another through the use of simple acting skills".

(China Daily 06/30/2017 page9)