Mao's Last Dancer

Born into a peasant family in a Chinese village during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Li Cunxin (as child Huang Wen Bin, as teenager Chengwu Guo, as adult Chi Cao) is selected by Communist Party officials for special training at the dance academy in Beijing. He grows into a talented and powerful young dancer, making a cultural exchange visit to the Houston ballet, where the artistic director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwod) recognizes his potential. The student soon becomes a star, and he discovers that America is not the dark, downtrodden place that was the propaganda dealt out by the party in his village school. Despite his concerns for the safety of his family, he decides he should stay in America – but the Chinese Government doesn’t agree.