[4] Bi Gan was born in Kaili City in Guizhou Province on June 4, 1989.
[6][7] During his college years, Bi watched Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, later stating in an interview, "Cinema can be different [from mainstream films]; you can make what you like.
Two years later in 2012, he made a black-and-white short film Diamond Sutra (《金刚经》; also known as The Poet and Singer), which features a story of murder in a small isolated town in the mountain.
[10] In 2015, Bi's debut feature film, Kaili Blues, written by him, gave the emerging director wider exposure.
[4] In 2017, Bi wrote and directed his second feature film Long Day's Journey into Night, starring Tang Wei, Huang Jue, Sylvia Chang, and Lee Hong-chi.