Today, we’re kick-starting another regular feature at Criticker’s Blog: Neglected Gems. These are films which not many of our users have seen, but which have been scored extremely high by those who have.

Devils on the Doorstep @ Amazon

First up, is Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi lai le), a Chinese production from 2000. It premiered at Cannes and won the festival’s Grand Prix (jury prize), but was banned in its own country.

The film is a black comedy, set in a small Chinese village along the Great Wall. Japanese soldiers have been delivered into the village as prisoners, and the townspeople are instructed to hold them until they’re picked up in the New Year. The promised pick-up never arrives, and as the villagers grow ever more nervous, they have to decide what to do about their unwanted guests.

Devils on the Doorstep is quickly paced and shot entirely in black and white. It garnered massive praise from the foreign press on release, but was banned by the Chinese government for inaccurate depictions of the Japanese occupation. The director, Wen Jiang, was banned from working in China for 7 years. The theatrical release of Devils on the Doorstep in the United States consisted of a single screen for 65 days.

More information can be found at the film’s Wikipedia entry