Cao Baoping
Cao Baoping (born 1968) is a Chinese filmmaker and screenwriter often described as occupying a middle ground between China's fifth- and sixth-generation directors. Born in Datong, Shanxi Province, he graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1989 and spent most of the 1990s teaching screenwriting there. He directed widely for television before his solo feature debut Trouble Makers (2006), a satirical black comedy about a village taking revenge on a gang of hoodlums. His tense, twisty crime drama The Equation of Love and Death (2008), starring Zhou Xun, won him Best New Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The Dead End (2015), a dark thriller about three friends bound by a long-ago killing, took the Best Director prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival, confirming his status as one of the more commercially confident auteurs of contemporary Chinese cinema.