Dead to Rights Wins Best Film at China's Golden Rooster Awards as Gao Ye and Tony Leung Ka Fai Take Top Acting Prizes
XIAMEN — Dead to Rights, Shen Ao's harrowing historical drama set during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, won Best Feature Film at the 39th China Film Golden Rooster Awards on Tuesday, 10 November 2026, closing five days of screenings and ceremonies at the 2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival in the coastal city of Xiamen, Fujian. The film's leading actress, Gao Ye, took Best Actress for her performance as Lin Yu Xiu, while veteran Hong Kong star Tony Leung Ka Fai won Best Actor for The Shadow's Edge.
Illustration: A golden rooster trophy takes centre stage at the Golden Rooster Awards ceremony in Xiamen. This is an AI-generated illustration, not a photograph of the event.
What Happened
The ceremony was held on the evening of 10 November 2026 in Xiamen, bringing the 2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival to a close after five days of screenings, forums and red-carpet events that began on 6 November. China's top film honours, launched in 1981 and sponsored by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Film Association, were presented across 20 categories, with 209 films reported to have applied this year.
Dead to Rights — known in Chinese as Nanjing Photo Studio (Nanjing Zhaoxiangguan) — was the night's biggest winner in the headline categories. Directed by Shen Ao, it took Best Feature Film, the ceremony's top prize, and its star Gao Ye won Best Actress for her role as Lin Yu Xiu. Gao Ye was visibly stunned as her name was announced and teared up on stage, in a moment that topped Weibo's entertainment trending list. Clips of actor Zhu Yi Long choking up as he congratulated her also went viral, according to reports of the ceremony.
Best Actor went to Tony Leung Ka Fai for his performance as Fu Long Sheng in The Shadow's Edge. According to Chinese media, the win makes Leung only the second actor ever to have won Best Actor at all three of China's major film awards — the Golden Rooster, the Golden Horse and the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Lan Xi Ya won Best Supporting Actress for Sound of Silence, telling the audience on stage: "I never imagined I would be standing here. Film has brought so many beautiful things into my life." Her film also won Best Directorial Debut for Wan Li, giving Sound of Silence two of the night's prizes. Best Supporting Actor went to Wushouer Sailai for Wan Tong Shu.
Best Director went to Zheng Da Sheng for Hideaway: The Dossiers (Secret Files), while the Jury Special Award went to Dear You, which also won Best Screenplay for writers Lan Hong Chun, Zheng Xuan Xuan, Yang Leng and Zhu Li Yun. Dear You had entered the night with six nominations, among the most of any film.
The craft and remaining prizes were shared just as widely: Cai Rou Hun Tun won Best Low-Budget Feature, Nobody won Best Animated Film and the Norwegian drama Sentimental Value won Best Foreign Language Film.
The full list of winners at the 39th Golden Rooster Awards:
- Best Feature Film: Dead to Rights
- Best Actor: Tony Leung Ka Fai, The Shadow's Edge
- Best Actress: Gao Ye, Dead to Rights
- Best Director: Zheng Da Sheng, Hideaway: The Dossiers
- Best Supporting Actor: Wushouer Sailai, Wan Tong Shu
- Best Supporting Actress: Lan Xi Ya, Sound of Silence
- Best Directorial Debut: Wan Li, Sound of Silence
- Best Screenplay: Lan Hong Chun, Zheng Xuan Xuan, Yang Leng and Zhu Li Yun, Dear You
- Jury Special Award: Dear You
- Best Cinematography: Dong Jin Song, Resurrection
- Best Music: Gao Xiao Yang, Wan Tong Shu
- Best Art Direction: Wang Jing, De Xian Jin Zhi
- Best Editing: Huang Zeng Hong Chen, Fei Xing Jia
- Best Sound: Wang Yan Wei, Blades of the Guardians
- Best Low-Budget Feature: Cai Rou Hun Tun
- Best Animated Film: Nobody
- Best Foreign Language Film: Sentimental Value
Background
The Golden Rooster Awards are China's oldest and most prestigious film honours. Established in 1981, they are presented by the China Film Association under the sponsorship of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and are traditionally decided by a jury of filmmakers, critics and industry professionals rather than by popular vote. They form one half of the annual China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, the country's flagship film gathering, which this year ran from 6 to 10 November in Xiamen.
The nominations were announced in Beijing on 19–20 October 2026. Dead to Rights and the action film Blades of the Guardians led the field with seven nominations each, ahead of Dear You with six. The strong showing for Dead to Rights was no surprise: by then the film had already become one of the defining Chinese releases of 2025, both commercially and critically.
Dead to Rights is a 2025 Chinese historical drama directed by Shen Ao. Set during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, it follows civilians who shelter in a photographic studio and use the photographs they develop to expose atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Its Chinese title, Nanjing Zhaoxiangguan, translates as Nanjing Photo Studio.
Illustration: A 1930s photographic studio in Nanjing, evoking the setting of Dead to Rights, in which civilians shelter in a photo studio during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. This is an AI-generated illustration, not a photograph of the film or the event.
Released in China on 25 July 2025, it became a major box-office success, grossing more than US$380 million — US$381 million according to Wikipedia — making it the third-highest-grossing Chinese film of 2025. It opened in the United States and Canada on 15 August 2025, holds a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 11 reviews, and was selected as China's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, although it was not nominated.
The subject matter carries particular weight. The Nanjing Massacre of 1937–38, in which Imperial Japanese forces killed large numbers of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war after capturing the then-capital Nanjing, remains one of the most sensitive episodes in modern Chinese history. Dead to Rights approaches it through the intimate setting of a photo studio, using the act of developing and preserving photographic evidence as its central dramatic device.
The other headline acting winner, Tony Leung Ka Fai, is one of Hong Kong cinema's most decorated performers, with a career spanning more than four decades. His win for The Shadow's Edge, in which he plays Fu Long Sheng, adds a Golden Rooster Best Actor prize to a career already recognised at the Golden Horse Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards. According to Chinese media, he is only the second actor to have completed that treble.
Gao Ye's win marks a career high point for the actress, whose performance as Lin Yu Xiu anchors the film's emotional core. The viral clips of Zhu Yi Long, visibly moved as he congratulated her, added a human note to a ceremony that is often a formal affair.
Why It Matters
The Golden Rooster Awards are often read as a barometer of what the Chinese film establishment values in a given year. The 2026 results point in a clear direction: a historical drama about national trauma, made on a large commercial scale, can still command the industry's highest honours. Dead to Rights is one of the biggest box-office hits of 2025, and its victory suggests commercial success and official recognition are not in tension in today's Chinese cinema.
The win also matters for how the Nanjing Massacre is remembered on screen. Nearly nine decades after 1937, the massacre remains a live subject in Chinese public life. By awarding its top prize to a film centred on preserving photographic evidence — on documenting atrocity so it cannot be denied — the jury endorsed a way of telling that history that is intimate and grounded in ordinary people rather than battlefield spectacle.
For Gao Ye, the Best Actress award is a breakthrough likely to reshape her career. A Golden Rooster win brings both prestige and a wider choice of future projects, and her acceptance becoming the most talked-about moment of the night on Weibo suggests audiences connected with her performance beyond the usual awards-season applause.
Tony Leung Ka Fai's win carries a different significance. If, as Chinese media have reported, he is only the second actor to have won Best Actor at the Golden Rooster, the Golden Horse and the Hong Kong Film Awards, the prize cements a cross-strait standing few performers have achieved — recognition spanning the whole Chinese-speaking film world.
The spread of the awards also tells a story. Prizes for Sound of Silence, Wan Tong Shu, Resurrection, Dear You and Blades of the Guardians show a jury willing to reward a wide range of filmmaking, from directorial debuts to big-budget action, rather than letting one film sweep the board.
What Happens Next
For Dead to Rights, the Golden Rooster triumph caps an extraordinary run that began with its July 2025 release in China and continued through its North American release that August and its selection as China's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. Although the film was not nominated for the Oscar, the win gives it a lasting domestic honour to match its box-office success.
For Gao Ye, the immediate future is likely to bring a surge of new offers. A Golden Rooster Best Actress award has historically been a career-defining honour in Chinese cinema, and the public warmth of the response to her win suggests audiences and the industry alike will be watching her next choices closely.
For Tony Leung Ka Fai, the win — and the reported treble of Best Actor prizes at the Golden Rooster, Golden Horse and Hong Kong Film Awards — will now be part of how his career is described.
The festival will return next year for its 40th edition. The success of a large-scale historical drama raises the question of whether next year's field will see more films tackling major episodes from Chinese history, while the strong showing for debut and low-budget work — Wan Li's Best Directorial Debut for Sound of Silence and the Best Low-Budget Feature prize for Cai Rou Hun Tun — suggests new voices will keep finding a place at the festival.
Illustration: A red-carpet evening in the coastal city of Xiamen during the 2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival. This is an AI-generated illustration, not a photograph of the event.
More immediately, the films honoured in Xiamen will continue their lives beyond the festival — in cinemas, on streaming platforms and in the awards-season conversations that follow the Golden Roosters each year. Dead to Rights, The Shadow's Edge, Sound of Silence and Dear You all leave Xiamen with prizes that will feature prominently in their promotion.
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FAQ
Who won Best Feature Film at the 2026 Golden Rooster Awards?
Dead to Rights (Nanjing Photo Studio), directed by Shen Ao, won Best Feature Film at the 39th China Film Golden Rooster Awards on 10 November 2026 in Xiamen. The drama, set during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, also won Best Actress for its star Gao Ye.
Who won Best Actress and Best Actor at the Golden Rooster Awards?
Gao Ye won Best Actress for her role as Lin Yu Xiu in Dead to Rights, and Tony Leung Ka Fai won Best Actor as Fu Long Sheng in The Shadow's Edge. Gao Ye was visibly stunned and teared up on stage, and the moment topped Weibo's entertainment trending list.
When and where was the 2026 Golden Rooster Awards ceremony held?
The ceremony was held on 10 November 2026 in Xiamen, Fujian, closing the 2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, which ran from 6 to 10 November. The awards, launched in 1981 and sponsored by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the China Film Association, were presented across 20 categories, with 209 films reported to have applied.
What is Dead to Rights about?
Dead to Rights is a 2025 Chinese historical drama directed by Shen Ao, set during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. It follows civilians sheltering in a photographic studio who use the photographs they develop to expose atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Its Chinese title is Nanjing Zhaoxiangguan, meaning Nanjing Photo Studio.
How successful was Dead to Rights at the box office?
Dead to Rights was released in China on 25 July 2025 and grossed more than US$380 million — US$381 million according to Wikipedia — making it the third-highest-grossing Chinese film of 2025. It opened in the United States and Canada on 15 August 2025, holds a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 11 reviews, and was selected as China's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards, although it was not nominated.
Sources
- MyDramaList — 39th Golden Rooster Awards winners report, 10 November 2026.
- China Daily — report on the 39th Golden Rooster Awards nominations, 20 October 2026.
- China Federation of Literary and Art Circles — 39th Golden Rooster Awards nominations announcement, Beijing, 19–20 October 2026.
- Wikipedia — "Dead to Rights (film)" (release dates, box office of US$381 million, Rotten Tomatoes rating, Academy Awards entry).
- China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival — 2026 festival programme and nominations announcement, 6–10 November 2026.
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