17 Jan 2017

Chinese Gay Film Finally Hitting Cinemas This Year

China’s first ever commercial feature length gay movie ‘Seek McCartney’ has battled censors for years.

China’s infamous movie regulators have approved gay movie ‘Seek McCartney’ for a second time.

The film’s producer Lu Jianmin posted a picture of the approval notice to his Sina Weibo account (link in Chinese, registration required) on Thursday. The notice indicated the film was approved on Tuesday.

The movie originally got approval in September 2015, “this is a small step for the regulator, and a big step for filmmakers,” director Wang Chao wrote at the time.

China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television announced in March 2016 that they were banning depictions of homosexuality in movies and on television.

Lu Jianmin would not comment on why the film needed to pass censors for a second time and whether the movie had been cut in any way, he told China Film Insider: “All I can say is the film will screen in the second half of the year.”

The film follows the clandestine relationship between a Chinese man (Han Geng) and his French friend (Jérémie Elkaïm) as they travel through Tibet together.

Watch the trailer below: