Hong Kong director Wayne Wang on Wednesday hit out at Chinese censorship as he presented his latest film ‘A Thousand Years of Good Prayers’ about the Chinese immigrant experience in the US, at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
"I'm a little sad when I see people that can't make their movies in China. It's kind of depressing that censorship is still happening in an economically powerful China," he said.
Wang revealed that China was to have stumped up half the budget for the film but pulled out because it objected to a line in the script where a character says: "Communism is good, it just got into bad hands".
He explained: "They said you have to quit the line. But I didn't because I live in a democratic country."
The director has long been based in the United States and his parents fled for Hong Kong after the Communist takeover of 1949.
Asked about his thoughts on China's hosting of next year's Olympics, Wang said that the country would be welcoming but that when it came to press freedom he felt pessimistic.
"I think they will be open to foreigners, they will be very nice and let the journalists write about 80 to 90 percent of what they want, even criticise.
"But when Chinese journalists will want to write, they won't be able to.
"They (the authorities) will try to hide the problems and there are so many problems in China growing so fast," Wang said, while observing that "I hardly get information from China."