Destiny unfolds in long-awaited spy tale

Three months after celebrating his 68th birthday, director Feng Xiaogang — long known for his sharp tongue and fiery temperament — appeared unusually gentle and composed before the media.

Earlier this month, at the premiere of his latest film, I Know Who You Are, held at Beijing Exhibition Theater, Feng kept a low profile. Wearing a pair of reading glasses, he stood quietly to one side, leaving the spotlight to the film's two leading actors, Hu Ge and Lei Jiayin.

The subdued appearance seemed a departure from the outspoken filmmaker audiences have known for decades. Yet beneath that calm exterior lies a story of persistence — one that stretches back more than three decades.

The roots of I Know Who You Are can be traced to 1993, when Feng and his longtime collaborator, writer Wang Shuo, jointly acquired the adaptation rights to Zhang Ce's 1992 novella Wu Hui Zhui Zong (No Regrets). The espionage story follows a police officer's four-decade pursuit of a Kuomintang spy who went undercover on the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The novella was first adapted into a 20-episode television series of the same title, becoming a hit when it aired in 1995. Written by journalist-turned-screenwriter Shi Jianquan, who has also served as scriptwriter of the new film, the TV drama evolved into a classic, securing a rating of 9.4 out of 10 on the major review aggregator Douban.

This is not a typical cat-and-mouse thriller. There are no car chases, no gunfights, no trench-coated spies trading coded messages in the rain. Instead, the film offers something rarer: an emotionally layered portrait of two men bound together by suspicion and circumstance, their lives unfolding against the backdrop of China's sweeping social transformation from 1949 to the late 1980s.

At its core, it is a meditation on fate — on how history, chance, and the quiet weight of personal choices can shape, and sometimes shatter, an ordinary life. That philosophical depth, and its exploration of the absurdity of destiny, is precisely what continued to resonate with Feng decades after he first encountered the story.

With the June 19 release of I Know Who You Are, Feng, whose career spans acclaimed works from The Dream Factory (1997) to Youth (2017), has finally realized his long-cherished dream. The film will also be released in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in early July, according to American magazine The Hollywood Reporter.

"It is a film I've always wanted to make. The lives we've lived — I hope to capture them on screen. This is a commitment, a responsibility … For directors of my generation, it is our duty to bring to life the eras and events that younger audiences have never experienced firsthand, so that through cinema they can truly understand the past," says Feng, a native of Beijing.

This film, as Feng puts it, is steeped in the everyday life of Beijing's hutong alleys. Unfolding on the eve of the founding ceremony of New China, the story follows Feng Jingbo — a Kuomintang colonel and secret agent played by actor Hu — who is entrusted by his superior, played by Yu Hewei, with an espionage mission, along with four gold bars and a radio transmitter.

However, during a casual chat in a barbershop, Feng Jingbo reveals his knowledge of military salutes, arousing the suspicion of Xiao Dali, the local police chief played by Lei. To aid his investigation, Xiao moves into the same courtyard where Feng Jingbo lives, becoming his neighbor. To maintain his cover, Feng Jingbo, who works as a geography teacher at a primary school, spares no effort — including sacrificing love to marry a woman from the "working class", and contributing to economic development, ultimately rising to become the school's principal. Meanwhile, Xiao endures a series of devastating blows — losing his wife, his youngest son, and having one leg crippled.

But Xiao's unwavering loyalty to the country, his persistence in pursuing the spy investigation, and his personal misfortunes all weigh heavily on Feng Jingbo's conscience. In the 1980s, Feng Jingbo's former superior — now a Hong Kong businessman — returns to Beijing for his son's wedding. It is then that Feng Jingbo discovers that his painstaking undercover work of 35 years has been meaningless, as he has long been forgotten by the intelligence agency in Taiwan.

Added to this is his growing admiration for the Communist Party of China, and Feng turns himself in willingly, finally finding himself able to share a drink with Xiao — the man he has respected and rivaled for half a lifetime.

For actor Hu, a Shanghai native, inspiration came from conversations with his father, who was born in 1949. "My father lived through the eras that Feng Jingbo experienced. Through him, I came to feel that individuals, within the sweep of history, are often carried forward by forces beyond their control," Hu says.

"As an intellectual who came of age in the old era, Feng Jingbo possesses an idealistic streak. He accepts the undercover mission out of a genuine hope that his country and its people would improve — he simply chooses the wrong side," adds Hu.

Lei, who plays the dedicated police chief, recalls reading the script at 6 am the following day, having received it from Feng Xiaogang the previous night. "The story is brilliantly written. What truly moves me is watching how people's fates shift and intertwine against the backdrop of a changing era," he says.

Interestingly, Lei reveals that he, Hu, and the two actresses who play their wives created a WeChat group, using their character names to chat every day. They discussed trivial details of daily life — such as whether they could raise hens in the courtyard — to cultivate the special bond between their characters, who are at once enemies and friends, and to let those nuanced emotions grow organically off-screen.

With its resonant lines and vivid, nostalgic depiction of Beijing decades ago, the film has gained wide acclaim, receiving 7.5 points on Douban and grossing 100 million yuan ($14.72 million) at the box office by Monday.