Best-selling Chinese novel adapted into big screen

The best-selling novel 'Wolf Totem'

Jean-Jacques Annaud

The best-selling novel 'Wolf Totem' received wide acclaim since it was published in 2004. Although rights to the novel adaptation were acquired by film corporations ten years ago, the film version of 'Wolf Totem' will finally meet the audience this February.

Set in 1967, "Wolf Totem" tells the story of a student sent from the city to the Inner Mongolian steppes. He lives with the nomads, develops a respect for freedom and nature and becomes fascinated with wolves. Both the director and lead actor, Feng Shaofeng, said the China-France co-production centered on the relationship between human and nature, and taking care of the environment.

"As an actor, it was an amazing journey to me. We were always told that wolves are very savage animals, they are wild and they eat people. But when I stayed with them during the shooting, I find wolves are incredible animals. They are hunters, but they live as a highly disciplined team," Feng said.

Rumour has it that famous directors including Peter Jackson were approached at the beginning, but it was Jean-Jacques Annaud, who has made films with animals in the past, such as "Two Brothers" and "The Bear," that finally took the chair to direct the film.

Annaud has visited China about 10 times each year since 2009, when he took on the project. Part of the reason why the project took so long was that Mongolian wolves that had to interact with the actors and crew had to be reared, a timeline that took three years.

"The message that captured my heart when I read the book was the need for balance between human presence and animal presence therefore let's say industrialization and nature. I feel it was a strong, very universal message, although it was a specific place, specific time, in Mongolia, I read it as something that could have happened in France, in my country, or in America, in the same years, it did happen everywhere," Director Jean-Jacques Annaud said.

"Wolf Totem" will be released in China on February 19 during the popular cinema-going period of Chinese New Year, and in France on February 25.