Movies Similar to The Turning of Wheels

To Live(1994)

Married couple Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in mid-20th century mainland China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.

Explosion Before Dawn(1984)

Shanghai Express(1932)

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

沙家店粮站(1954)

Jue Sha(1993)

Secret Order Intercept(1986)

Set in the anti-Japanese war, a Japanese commander who killed a lot of Chinese receives an order to return to Japan. Scouts from the eighth route army must intercept the executioner before he leaves China.

Ten Thousand Li Ahead(1941)

Driver Ko Wah (Lee Ching) refuses to transport ammunitions for the enemy, and is sent to jail after a scuffle with his traitorous boss. Although down and out, Ko takes in Siu-fung (Yung Siu-yi), an unwilling erotic dancer who has fled the war to Hong Kong. They may lead destitute lives, but their conscience remains intact. Director Cai Chusheng co-founded the National Salvation Association of Cinema. When Ko makes a uproar at the dance parlour and rips apart his friend's zombie costume, it represents Cai's criticism on the muddling-along attitude of Hong Kong society at the time. The characters' decision to return to the mainland to join the resistance effort also foretells Cai's decision to do the same in real-life.

Sink or Swim(1992)

Bloody Winen Erdek(1992)

Liu Hanwu, a soldier of the Anti-Union Alliance, needs to obtain a batch of international aid drugs. He needs all his wits and courage while fighting with the Japanese special military commanders.

Ice and Snow Jin Dalai(1963)

Assembly(2007)

Follows a soldier trying to gain recognition for comrades who died in 1948, at a turning point in the civil war between the communists and the nationalist forces of the Kuomintang.

Mao: Seize the Day, Seize the Hour(1972)

Mao Zedong was not only a revolutionary leader and thinker, he was also a poet. In poems written in the classic calligraphic tradition he expresses his experiences and visions. In this film, 8 of Mao's poems are sung, recited and interpreted: 'Changsha' (1925), 'Jinggang Mountains' (1928), 'The Long March' (1935), 'Snow' (1936), 'The People's Liberation Army Captures Nanjing' (1949), 'Swimming' (1956), 'Reply to Comrade Guo Moruo' (1961) and 'Reascending Jinggang Mountains' (1965). Through these poems we get a picture of the Chinese revolution from its first beginning in 1921 until the Cultural Revolution. The poems of Mao Zedong have been published in more than 57 million copies

The Bitter Tea of General Yen(1932)

An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.

China in battle(1950)

A documentary film about the history and present of the struggle of the communist troops led by Mao Zedong and Chu Tie in China.

100 Years(2021)

As the Communist Party of China celebrates its 100th anniversary, this documentary looks back at the party’s history, from the 1920’s, to the Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution and the reforms by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Did the Great Famine cost more than 15 million lives? How does the Cultural Revolution continue to shape Chinese politics today? What was capitalism like after Mao’s death? Through rare and never-before-seen historical footage, expert interviews and eyewitness accounts of the Great Famine, Tiananmen incident, and the Cultural Revolution, get to know how one party has so profoundly shaped China.

The Crossing II(2015)

A story of three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s Taiwan and Shanghai, centered around the 1949 sinking of Taiping.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing(1955)

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Red Poppy(1955)

A story set in revolutionary China, whose proletariat suffers and starves, but refuses to be passive and rises to decisive resistance. Even the artists believe in the victory of the working class, and the symbol of this victory becomes the red poppy, a flower given by a sailor from a Russian ship that brought the much-prized flour to China as a gift to the Chinese comrades.

A Tale of Three Cities(2015)

A former spy in the Chinese Nationalist Party falls for an opium-dealing widow, as China is ravaged by war and revolution.

The General Died at Dawn(1936)

China, 1930s, during the ravaging civil war. General Pen entrusts O'Hara, an intrepid American adventurer, with the mission of providing a large sum of money to Mr. Wu with the task of buying weapons in Shanghai to help end General Yang's tyranny that keeps an entire province under his ruthless iron boot.