China wants to suppress independent cinema. But young film-makers are undaunted by red lines

China’s film censorship regime has tightened in recent years. Films that critique society, of which there were several in the early 2000s, now rarely make it on to the screen. Photograph: Gilles Sabrié/The Guardian

Class started at 9am. Assignments were doled out, ideas were pitched and scripts written, followed by a long day of shooting and editing. Twelve hours later, 20 aspiring and exhausted film-makers were sat in a crowded, makeshift studio, listening to their work being trashed.

“The content is still too poor,” the course director, Nan Xin, remarked, after watching a two-minute film about boys on the loose who harass a stray dog.