In September Beijing comedy This is Sanlitun had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Many people were excited about this, but perhaps me more than most, as I co-wrote the film.

The film satirizes a certain sort of China expat. It’s a type we all know, and one that I almost certainly am; he tells you he is a screenwriter; a journalist; a documentary-maker; a stand-up comedian; an angel investor; hell, the guy is about to have a novel published that is set to blow Proust out of the water; but, and this is a big but: he is in fact a, not so humble, English teacher.

Explaining the film to people has led to a few awkward conversations. They generally start with me outlining the idea, when suddenly things get a bit too real and there’s a guilty silence. In my stupidity, I then ask them what they do in China: “Oh, I have written a few scripts… uh, guess I’m just an English teacher really…” This, of course, makes me feel like a five-star prick. Ok, the film gently mocks a certain type, but I do think it’s great that foreigners in China feel enlivened to try other stuff. No doubt, I would never have got around to writing anything had I remained in London; I would probably be flogging dodgy life insurance, over the phone, from a dank and dingy office booth.

As it stands, I’m doing last minute adjustments with the director. Now, directors are also subject to their own litany of clichés. The all-powerful film director: the bullying auteur that makes actresses weep, screams at his cowering crew, demands his iced water at an unusually specific temperature, and only snorts his cocaine off a mirror resting on the head of a very particular Latvian midget. These types, and Stanley Kubrick is perhaps the most famous (by reputation at least), are extremists known for demanding complete control over every single aspect of their work, being absolute perfectionists, and, most worryingly, being willing to crush everyone that threatens their creative vision.

Now, the thing about the director of This is Sanlitun, Robert Douglas, is that he fits the archetype down to an absolute T; it’s almost comic. He’s Icelandic, so perhaps it’s all the Viking blood trickling down from days of yore, but he is certainly isn’t going to let a small matter of, say, diplomacy get in the way of his film.

He created whole days of uneasy silence on set, simply because his line producer had the audacity to order the crew organic dumplings (25 RMB) instead of, merely, dumplings (8 RMB) for lunch. He’s fired composers in a second for not being able to realize the specific musical vision in his own mind (Douglas has no background in music whatsoever). Graphic designers have been discarded with the bat of an eyelid, “She couldn’t do it, so I sacked her. I’m going to do it myself.”

I fell out with the director just the once on set, and it wasn’t a particularly sophisticated argument either. It went something like this: “F*ck you.”

“No, f*ck you.”

And we both raged off set, a couple of balding prima donnas.

On one stressful day, the director smashed up the set, screaming that nobody on the film could possibly understand what he was trying to do for his art, the reason: someone had misplaced his nasal decongestant, the oddly named, Touch of Paradise. Ok, so I made that last story up, but the point is, I could see it happening all too easily (he genuinely does own a tube of Touch of Paradise).

The thing that makes it all galling- and for the film’s sake, pleasing- is that he is actually an excellent film-maker; being a domineering fascist on set kind of works. He has, with more than a little help from the excellent actor/writer, Chris Loton, made a great film. Now, a film with the tiny budget of This is Sanlitun is unlikely to ever be a box office smash (we pray and hope). But, we like to think we have held up amusing, though not particularly powerful, lens up to the weird world of China expat life. We are certainly pleased that Toronto saw its merits, and we hope you will too.

For the moment, I will be sweating it out, worried the director reads this article. The phone call is imminent, “You’ll never work for me, or in Sanlitun again, you f*cking jumped-up little dwarf.”

In the meantime you can all check out the trailer to This is Sanlitun here:



Carlos Ottery is a writer, actor, journalist and the co-founder of Comedy Club China. He has taught English in China for the last five years.