Highest-grossing documentary revels in recent developments

Amazing China, a 90-minute documentary, has become the country's highest-grossing factual movie.

Featuring a number of spectacular aerial shots, the movie - edited down from 1,000-plus hours of footage in seven months - records major developments since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

Mind-blowing sequences include megaprojects, ranging from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, the world's largest radio telescope, to Blue Whale 2, the largest maritime drilling rig on the planet, and the world's longest bullet-train network.

The movie also contains a large number of record-breaking statistics, such as China being home to the largest number of movie screens in the world.

Jointly produced by the State broadcaster China Central Television and China Film Co, the documentary has grossed about 243 million yuan ($38.5 million) since it opened in theaters across the mainland on March 2.

In addition to breaking box-office records, the documentary has been acclaimed by audiences and movie critics.

"After watching the documentary, I feel so proud to be Chinese. It authentically displays our country's achievements, which should be hailed by the rest of the world," said Huang Huilin, an 85-year-old professor of movie and television studies at Beijing Normal University.

Speaking about the movie's artistic characteristics, Gao Xiaohong, a professor of radio and television journalism at Communication University of China, said Amazing China organically weaves individual stories with a grand narrative about the country's development and policies.

With reference to sequences featuring a vineyard entrepreneur from Fujian province who has created more than 3,000 jobs in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Gao said the documentary not only tells the story of individuals striving to succeed, but also displays the government's wish to encourage those who want to lead better, more prosperous lives.

Zhao Baohua, a movie critic who is also a deputy director of the Chinese Film Literature Association, said the documentary is an epic that records the new era of China's rise, and believes it will have a huge social effect.

"The documentary serves as a model for quality mainstream movies and shows that works of art can be more than just mere entertainment," he said.

Liu Qi, a netizen who works for a popular public account on WeChat that focuses on expats' impressions of China, said the documentary demonstrates the country's Confucian culture rooted in its 5,000-year history, and also gives foreign audiences a grand perspective of what the country is like right now.