{"id":53345,"date":"2025-08-08T16:55:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T16:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/53345\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T16:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T16:55:12","slug":"watch-trailer-for-the-dating-game-doc-on-men-seeking-mates-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/53345\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Trailer For ‘The Dating Game,’ Doc On Men Seeking Mates In China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: The men of the new documentary The Dating Game<\/a> are looking for love in modern China, but the odds aren\u2019t exactly stacked in their favor.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a society that favors male babies over female, there are about 30 million more men than women around, \u201ca huge overall sex imbalance,\u201d according to the Pew Research Center. It also means that men of marrying age \u2013 guys like Zhou, Li, and Wu \u2014 who hope to find a wife face much more robust competition. In the film directed by Violet Du Feng<\/a>, the men enlist the aid of a dating coach \u2013 Hao \u2013 and attend a weeklong dating camp to enhance their facility in the arts of seduction, or at least basic conversation skills with the opposite sex.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Dating Game, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, opens in theaters in the UK on September 19 and in the U.S. on October 10. We have your first look at the film in the exclusive trailer above. The August 8 (8\/8\/2025) debut date for the trailer is no accident: 8 is considered the luckiest number in Chinese culture, because the word for it \u2014 Ba \u2014 sounds similar to Fa, the word that means to make fortune.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Violet<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Violet Du Feng attends \u2018The Dating Game\u2019 premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCindy Ord\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe majority of the 30 million-surplus of men, most of them at the highest [risk of failing to find a wife] are those who are working class and from the rural area of small towns and Hao is one of them,\u201d Feng told us in an interview at Sundance<\/a>. \u201cHe understands deeply where these men come from. And I think despite the techniques that he\u2019s trying to teach these men that kind of alter them in a way that I don\u2019t necessarily agree with, fundamentally his interest, his motivation to help these men is quite genuine. And that contradiction and that controversy is what actually I think is really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHao tutors his \u201cstudents\u201d in how to project an attractive image both online and in person; he suggests \u201copening lines\u201d for them to meet women in public settings and arranges a photo shoot for them with dogs so they can post those pix on social media \u2013 on the theory that \u201cwomen like men who like dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018The Dating Game\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFish+Bear Pictures\/Violet Films,<\/p>\n

\n\tHao\u2019s charges do their best to follow his counsel, yet express skepticism at times. In the trailer, one of them says, \u201cI don\u2019t like to pretend. I am who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film contains many poignant and humorous moments, and a number of awkward ones as the men flub most attempts to appeal to potentially interested parties. The Dating Game has played to sold out screenings at festivals around the world including Sundance, Hot Docs in Toronto, CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, San Francisco, Sheffield DocFest in the UK, and True\/False in Columbia, MO. In Missouri, Feng\u2019s documentary attracted a full audience at a 1,200-seat venue.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve had people afterwards telling me that their jaw hurts from laughing too hard,\u201d Feng told us in Columbia. \u201cAnd this morning I\u2019ve been stopped by people on the street, at diners, in the coffee shop, elevators, everywhere, telling me that they love the film. And it just meant so much to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFeng won Best International Director for The Dating Game at the Doc Edge festival in New Zealand, and her film won a Special Mention there for Best International Feature. The documentary has been nominated for top awards at Sundance, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Miami Film Festival and more.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Dating Game is a production of Fish+Bear Pictures and Violet Films, in association with Bird Street Productions, Ten Thousand Images, and Chicken & Egg Pictures. It is produced by Oscar winner Joanna Natasegara<\/a> (The White Helmets, The Edge of Democracy) and James Costa<\/a> (Hidden Letters, Welcome to Chechnya). <\/p>\n

\n\tWatch The Dating Game trailer above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: The men of the new documentary The Dating Game are looking for love in modern China, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,44478,44479,344,44480,44481],"class_list":["post-53345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-james-costa","tag-joanna-natasegara","tag-movies","tag-the-dating-game","tag-violet-du-feng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}