Leading Chinese director Feng Xiaogang has claimed that film crews are using untrained “farmers” in key roles on the sets of major movies.

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The blockbuster film-maker, once referred to as “China’s Spielberg” by Newsweek, spoke at a gathering of members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

“Most of the people working in the lighting department are from Henan province,” he said, referencing a rural area in China. “They are not trained professionally – they got the job simply because they happen to know someone who works on the film crew. The stage hands, you tell them what kind of scene you want, but they’ve never seen that kind of setting themselves.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, he said that the “low quality” of the workers was becoming “a big barrier to the development of the Chinese film industry”.

Recent years have seen a major increase in Chinese box-office receipts, and the influence it has on the global industry. There was a 48% rise between 2014 and 2015, and this past month comedy The Mermaid became the country’s biggest ever film, passing the $500m mark in just 28 days.



“Although we are going to exceed the US box office in the future, there is still a big gap between us and the States in terms of the quality of film production,” Xiaogang said.

He has previously spoken about the country’s problem with censorship and how he believes it is also holding the industry back. He has described some of the proposed changes to his films as “ridiculous”. China’s stringent views on unacceptable content have continued to prevent many major western films from being granted a release, including Deadpool and The Hateful Eight.

Xiaogang is known for disaster movie Aftershock and romantic comedy If You Are the One, both of which were big hits in China. He has worked with international talent such as US actors Tim Robbins, Donald Sutherland and Adrien Brody.