Li Yang is a Chinese writer-director. Though often grouped with the so-called Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, he is in fact closer in age to the Fifth Generation and in interviews has denied membership with either group, claiming that such labels are only artificial differentiations.Born in Xi'an, China in 1959, Li studied at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute from 1985 to 1987, after which he moved to Germany. There he made several documentary films and spent some time acting on German television before eventually enrolling and graduating from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne in 1995.