Xie Fei is a name familiar to moviegoers both in China and abroad. The director was born in Yan'an in 1937 and graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the 1960s. Today he is a professor at the academy. Xie has only directed nine films during his long career, but they've all been showered with acclaim, both at home and from abroad. His movie Black Snow won the Silver Bear Award for personal achievement at the Berlin Film Festival in 1989, where he later won the Golden Bear Award for Sesame Oil Woman in 1992. Three years later his touching movie A Mongolian Tale won Best Director at the Montreal Film Festival. Most of Xie's films have been adapted from famous Chinese novels, helping to offer a deeper insight into Chinese history and culture. The movies focus on the lives of ordinary people who struggle in vain to come to terms with the limitations imposed by the society they live in.