China’s natural world comes alive on the big screen. After a big success in Chinese theaters, Lu Chuan’s movie “Born in China” is to hit US cinema screens on April 21, one day before Earth Day. 

The director has been in Los Angeles since Monday, ahead of the nature documentary's US premiere. Before his departure, World Insight’s Tian Wei caught up with him, and asked him the true essence of the movie. 

Lu says he wants to use the movie to convey the life philosophy of Chinese people, which is the belief that death is not the end of life but rather another beginning. So he thinks we should retrieve the true beauty of nature and life. 

To put together the whole movie was not an easy task. It took over a year for Lu and his team to go through a total of 500 hours of material to build the storyline. 

“One day I was looking at the materials on an abandoned hard drive, one frame shot shocked me. It was a picture of snow leopard that died in the snow, looked so desperate, so sad. It touched me and all of a sudden, I realized what kind of movie I really wanted to make,” Lu told World Insight. 

"Born in China" follows the stories of three animal families and reveals breathtaking scenes from the rarely seen wilds of China. 

A panda called Ya Ya, a first-time mother, guides her growing baby, learning to let go. A two-year-old golden monkey who feels displaced by his new baby sister joins up with a group of monkey outcasts. And a mother leopard faces some of the harshest and most unforgiving environments on the planet while raising her two cubs.

The movie, directed by Lu Chuan, is produced by Disney's Roy Conli, and renowned nature filmmakers Brian Leith and Phil Chapman. 

“Chinese movie made by an international team, that’s a new way of telling Chinese stories,” Lu said. And he added that Chinese teams can learn a lot from the Hollywood production process.

Talking about the current Chinese movie industry, Lu said it’s in a positive period. 

“The Chinese film industry now enjoys strong financial support. It’s in the best moment. But money should never be the motivation for a filmmaker to make good movies,” Lu said. 

So what kind of movie should we make for the younger generation? Lu said he doesn’t know the answer but he only wants to make different movies. 

Lu is hailed as a major new voice in Chinese cinema. His first three films -- The Missing Gun, Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, and the war drama City of Life and Death -- garnered both Chinese and international acclaim. 

"Born in China", his first English movie, has again caught the world's attention. 

“I take movie-making as a journey. I really want to go to different places to explore different humanity. Only in movie-making, I want to be very aggressive, ambitious, and I want there to be no boundaries,” he said. 

While “Born in China” cherishes the links between humans and nature, Lu Chuan is also interested in the links between people and culture. So for his next movie, he has chosen to tell the story of a young American living in China, based on Peter Hessler’s well-known book “River Town.” He said it’ll also be a salute to his youth of purity, naivety and bravery.