Unknowns Shawn Dou, left, and Zhou Dongyu play the young lovers in Zhang Yimou's Under the Hawthorne Tree, which opened the Pusan Film Festival. (Pusan Film Festival)

Chinese director Zhang Yimou opened the Pusan Film Festival in South Korea Thursday with Under the Hawthorn Tree, a movie that treads the sensitive territory of China's Cultural Revolution.

Zhang, the veteran director of Raise the Red Lantern and House of Flying Daggers, called the film a "basic, no frills" romance.

Speaking at a news conference in South Korea's second largest city, Zhang said he wanted to show Chinese young people an "innocent kind of love."

"It's a simple story. I think a lot of people in their 20s and 30s will find it interesting that they have the same feelings as their parents and grandparents felt in their time," he said.

No one who lived in China at the time was unaffected by the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao's Communist party attempted to control all aspects of life. People who were educated, had been overseas or had previously owned property were sent to work in the countryside as re-education.

It was also a time of extreme sexual prudishness, in which young people were encouraged to divert that energy into working for the party.

Against this backdrop, Under the Hawthorn Tree tells the story of a romance between a high school student from a "rightist" background and a young geologist whose family are favoured because of their party ties.

Chinese director Zhang Yimou waves during the opening ceremony of the 15th Pusan International Film Festival in Thursday. (Yoo Yong-suk/Yonhap/Associated Press)

Even hand-holding is taboo, so their romance, though dangerous politically, is at most a puppy love.

Zhang said he sought a bland colour palette and cast two newcomers — Zhou Dongyu and Shawn Dou — in the lead roles in an attempt to capture the tenor of the times.

For a director who created one of the most successful Chinese movies outside of the country — Hero — and who was asked to co-direct the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing, the film is a return to the simplicity of his earlier works such as Not One Less.

But it can be dangerous to depict the Cultural Revolution even in today's China and Zhang's 1994 film To Live was banned after dealing with the topic, while another director, Tian Zhuangzhuang, was barred from filmmaking after the 1993 release of The Blue Kite.

Zhang will conduct a master class at the festival, followed by classes from Carlos Saura, Mark Lee and Wada Emi.

Works from two Quebec directors, Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats and Denis Villeneuve's Incendies, are scheduled for screenings in Pusan.

Other Canadian entries include:

• Silence Lies by Julie Hivon.
• The Bang Bang Club by Steven Silver.
• Twice a Woman by Francois Delisle.
• Altitude by Kaare Andrews.
• Crying Out by Robin Aubert.

The Pusan Film Festival will close with Camellia, an omnibus by directors from Thailand, Japan and Korea.