Trailer for Emperor Visits the Hell.
Winner of the Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema at the Vancouver Film Festival, Li’s crafty reworking of part of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West is one of the most inspired recent works from an independent Chinese filmmaker. Emperor Li Shimin is now a bureaucratic boss in a big city, where the crooked Dragon King’s attempt to change the weather has backfired and condemned him to death. Li pulls the rug out from under everyone, from the audience to those whose power has gone to their heads.