Dead to Rights, Shen Ao’s drama about civilians who hide photographic evidence of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, won best feature film at China’s 39th Golden Rooster Awards in Xiamen on Tuesday 10 November, according to the official list published by the state news agency Xinhua. Gao Ye won best actress for the same film, and the Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka-fai was named best actor for the crime thriller The Shadow’s Edge.
Twenty awards were presented at the closing ceremony of the 2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, which ran from 6 to 10 November. The prizes, chosen from 209 entries, went both to the biggest commercial hit of summer 2025 and to a cluster of smaller films, including a first feature and a regional-language drama. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value won best foreign-language film.
Key facts
- Best feature film: Dead to Rights, directed by Shen Ao, which also won best actress for Gao Ye
- Best actor: Tony Leung Ka-fai, The Shadow’s Edge, his first Golden Rooster nomination in a career of more than 40 years
- Best director: Zheng Dasheng, Hideaway: The Dossiers
- Special jury award and best screenplay: Dear You, directed by Lan Hongchun
- Best foreign-language film: Sentimental Value (Norway, France, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, UK)
The winners
Dead to Rights opened in mainland China on 25 July 2025 and grossed RMB3.01bn ($422m at end-August 2025 exchange rates) over last year’s summer season, according to China Daily. Screen reported in September 2025 that it was the biggest title of that summer. It was China’s submission for the international feature Oscar at the 98th Academy Awards. Niu Vision Media released it in North America, with Echelon Studios, and Emperor Motion Pictures in Hong Kong, while the Beijing company Hugoeast took sales in other territories. Li Xianzeng, general manager of China Film Group, joined Shen on stage to collect the award.
Gao, who plays Lin Yuxiu, is from Changzhou, not far from Nanjing, and told China Daily she had grown up surrounded by the history of the massacre. Leung, 68, won for playing a criminal mastermind opposite Jackie Chan in The Shadow’s Edge, which took RMB1.2bn ($168m) at the box office in summer 2025. It was his first Golden Rooster nomination in more than four decades of acting, China.org.cn reported.
Zheng Dasheng’s Hideaway: The Dossiers, which won best director, follows Communist Party members who kept more than 20,000 secret documents hidden in Shanghai between 1931 and 1949. China Daily noted that the film was made on a modest budget and received five nominations.
Two smaller films took two prizes each. Dear You, Lan Hongchun’s drama about the Chaoshan diaspora and the remittance letters its emigrants sent home, won the special jury award and best screenplay for Lan and his three co-writers. Sound of Silence, about a lawyer from a deaf family who takes on a scam targeting deaf people, won best directorial debut for Wan Li and best supporting actress for Lan Xiya. Wan told China Daily the award had given him confidence at a time when, in his words, many describe the industry as being in a downturn.
By FilmBunch’s count, four films won two awards each: Dead to Rights, Dear You, Sound of Silence and Wan Tongshu, a biographical film about the effort to preserve the Uyghur Twelve Muqam musical suite. Together they took eight of the 20 prizes, and no film won more than two.
Full list of winners
- Best feature film: Dead to Rights, Shen Ao
- Special jury award: Dear You, Lan Hongchun
- Best director: Zheng Dasheng, Hideaway: The Dossiers
- Best directorial debut: Wan Li, Sound of Silence
- Best screenplay: Lan Hongchun, Zheng Xuanxuan, Yang Leng and Zhu Liyun, Dear You
- Best actor: Tony Leung Ka-fai, The Shadow’s Edge
- Best actress: Gao Ye, Dead to Rights
- Best supporting actor: Hoxur Salay, Wan Tongshu
- Best supporting actress: Lan Xiya, Sound of Silence
- Best low- to medium-budget feature: Shanghai Wonton
- Best cinematography: Dong Jinsong, Resurrection
- Best editing: Huang Zenghongchen, Take Off
- Best art direction: Wang Jing, Gezhi Town
- Best music: Gao Xiaoyang, Wan Tongshu
- Best sound: Wang Yanwei, Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert
- Best foreign-language film: Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier (Norway, France, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, UK)
- Best animated film: Nobody
- Best documentary or science and education film: Shenzhou 13 (Blue Planet Outside the Window), China Media Group
- Best children’s film: The Sound of Malan Flowers Blooming
- Best traditional opera film: Gu Yanwu
English titles follow those used by the films’ distributors and by China’s state media, which differ in places. The supporting actor’s name is also romanised as Wushouer Sailai and Hoshur Seley. Our other festival award lists are collected on one page.
Our reading
The top prize went to the biggest hit of summer 2025, more than a year after its release, at a time when the market that made it has weakened. China’s box office fell 22% in October to RMB2.05bn ($308m), as FilmBunch reported earlier this month, and China accounts for most of the gap between this year’s global takings and pre-pandemic levels. Below the headline awards, the jury favoured smaller productions: a first feature, a regional-language family drama and a modestly budgeted archive story took the debut, jury, screenplay and directing prizes. For buyers outside China, those three titles are the ones the awards bring into view; Dead to Rights already has its international distribution in place.
Sources
- Xinhua, 第39届中国电影金鸡奖揭晓 (winners of the 39th Golden Rooster Awards), 10 November 2026 (Chinese)
- Xinhua, full list of winners as announced at the ceremony, 10 November 2026 (Chinese)
- Xinhua English, Top honors unveiled at China's Golden Rooster Awards, 11 November 2026
- China.org.cn, Dead to Rights takes top honors at 39th Golden Rooster Awards, 12 November 2026 (English titles)
- China Daily, Dead to Rights wins top film award, 12 November 2026 (box office, winners' remarks)
- Yangcheng Evening News, Guangdong film Dear You wins two Golden Rooster awards, with full list (Chinese)
- CGTN, CMG space documentary wins at China's Golden Rooster Awards, 11 November 2026
- Screen, Hugoeast lands sales rights to China box office hit Dead To Rights, 4 September 2025
- Emperor Motion Pictures, Dead To Rights distribution page (Hong Kong)
- WMOOV, Dear You film page (English title, languages)
- Far East Films, Trailer: Sound of Silence (synopsis)
- European Central Bank, euro reference rates, 29 August 2025 (CNY 8.3155, USD 1.1658 per euro)
- Echelon Studios, Dead to Rights film page (Oscar submission)
- Echelon Studios, Dead to Rights North American release announcement, 28 July 2025