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Forever Enthralled

Forever Enthralled
Forever Enthralled Poster.jpg
Directed by Chen Kaige
Produced by Han Sanping
Chen Hong
Du Jiayi
Written by Chen Kaige
Geling Yan
Chen Kuo-fu
Starring Leon Lai
Zhang Ziyi
Sun Honglei
Masanobu Ando
Music by Zhao Jiping
Cinematography Zhao Xiaoshi
Distributed by China Film Group
Release date
  • December 5, 2008 (2008-12-05)
Running time
146 minutes
Country China
Language Mandarin
Budget $15 million

Forever Enthralled (simplified Chinese: 梅兰芳; traditional Chinese: 梅蘭芳; pinyin: Méi Lánfāng) is a Chinese biographical film directed by Chen Kaige; the film marks Chen's eleventh feature film as a director. Forever Enthralled follows the life of Mei Lanfang, one of China's premiere opera performers. It stars Leon Lai as Mei, Zhang Ziyi, Sun Honglei and Masanobu Ando.

Known during production as Mei Lanfang, the film's English title was changed in November 2008, shortly before its release, to Forever Enthralled.

The film was shown in competition at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival for the Golden Bear award.

Forever Enthralled was produced on a budget of $15 million (US) by the China Film Group and Taiwan's China Magnetics Corporation Company (CMC Company), which had previously helped fund John Woo's Red Cliff and Alexi Tan's Blood Brothers. Unlike Chen's previous film, The Promise, Chen is not re-teaming with his usual producers, Etchie Stroh and Moonstone Entertainment.

Just prior to the film's release in December 2008, Forever Enthralled producer, the China Film Group, ran into legal hurdles after it was sued by another production company, Milimeter. Milimeter claimed that it held the copyright to the film based on a contract signed between the two companies in 2004.


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