His arthouse films have mostly focused on the disenfranchised, particularly ethnic Koreans living in China; these include Grain in Ear (2006), Desert Dream (2007), Dooman River (2011), Scenery (2013), and Gyeongju (2014).
[1] He first became known in his native land China as a respected author of novels and short stories, such as Cicada Chirping Afternoon (1986).
Shot in 2003 during the SARS epidemic in only three interior locations to convey the feelings of loneliness and claustrophobia, it depicts the life of a middle-aged male pickpocket with a hand tremor.
The film is centered on a Sino-Korean single mother who makes her living by selling kimchi on the streets of a small town in Northern China.
[7] [8][9] For his third feature, Zhang set Desert Dream (2007) in a small, drought-threatened village on the Chinese-Mongolian border where the lives of a farmer obsessed with tree planting to stave off desertification, a woman North Korean defector and her child, and a wandering soldier cross paths (the film's original title Hyazgar means "boundary" in Mongolian).
[12] Iri was filmed in the industrial city of Iksan, making it Zhang's first movie set in South Korea.
It starred Uhm Tae-woong and Yoon Jin-seo as a taxi driver and his mentally challenged sister who are still struggling thirty years later with the aftermath of the Iri Station Explosion in 1977.
[20] He later expanded Over There into a feature-length documentary film titled Scenery, which probes the experiences and dreams of 14 migrant workers in South Korea and the spaces they inhabit.
Zhang said he chose the quaint city of Gyeongju as the setting because "just like the curves of the tomb, life and death are inextricably intertwined.