Devils on the Doorstep

Set during the Japanese occupation, a peasant and his family find themselves hosting two captured men cast from the occupying army. The owner is pressured by local leaders and neighbors to hide them through the coming New Year, when they will be collected. The town convenes to question the prisoners and weigh what mercy, loyalty, and duty mean in practice. One inmate is a swaggering Japanese nationalist, the other a jittery translator who studies the room as if it were a battlefield. As fear and resentment mount, villagers debate whether to extend shelter or hand the men over to avoid collective blame. Each discussion tests the community and reveals how quickly fear can reorder trust.

Directed by Jiang Wen and written by Haiying Li, Xing Liu, and Shi Jianquan, Devils on the Doorstep released in 2001. The film pairs a provocative director with a compact, humanist script grounded in wartime moral conflict.

Box office data for Devils on the Doorstep is not widely published, and the film is more noted for festival reception and controversy than box office numbers.

Devils on the Doorstep provoked debate about wartime memory and moral choices. Its stark depiction of villagers forced to judge captives sparked discussions about collaboration and the human cost of fear, influencing later conversations about how cinema portrays occupation and complicity.

Critics highlighted the film's spare, tense storytelling and Jiang Wen's capacity to balance humor with brutality in perilous moments. The narrative centers on the gray area between duty and humanity, asking what a community owes its own members and outsiders alike.