Ning Ying (born 1959 in Beijing) is a female Chinese film director often considered a member of China's "Sixth Generation" filmmaker coterie,[1] a group that also includes Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai.
[2] Her sister, the screenwriter Ning Dai, is a frequent collaborator and the wife of fellow director Zhang Yuan.
[3] Part of the first class to reenter the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 (along with Fifth Generation helmers Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Chen Kaige), Ning Ying's career veered away from the path of her male counterparts when she was allowed to study abroad in Italy's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
"[4] Ning followed her Beijing trilogy with a full-length documentary, Railroad of Hope in 2002, which followed the mass migration of cheap labor throughout China.
[1] In 2005, she made Perpetual Motion, which premiered in several major film festivals, notably Venice and Toronto.