Storm Under the Sun

Directed by Peng Xiaolian and S. Louisa Wei, Storm Under the Sun is the first feature documentary devoted to the 1955 Anti-Hu Feng Campaign, a political purge that foreshadowed the broader persecution of intellectuals during China’s Anti-Rightist Campaign.

Drawing on survivor testimony, family histories, archival footage, woodcut prints, political cartoons and animation, the film traces the campaign’s origins and devastating consequences. Hu Feng, an influential literary critic, poet and advocate for artistic independence, was personally condemned by Mao Zedong and imprisoned for decades. Thousands of writers, intellectuals and their family members were subsequently implicated.

For director Peng Xiaolian, this history is also deeply personal. Her father, Peng Baishan, was accused of belonging to the “Hu Feng Counterrevolutionary Clique” and later died during the Cultural Revolution. Beginning in 2003, Peng and Wei spent more than five years recording the memories of survivors and affected families.

Both a rigorous historical investigation and an intimate act of remembrance, Storm Under the Sun restores names, experiences and voices that were pushed to the margins of official history. It is a powerful reflection on political persecution, artistic independence and the responsibility of cinema to preserve memory.