FRENCH film director Jean Jacques Annaud is one of the foreign filmmakers who many Chinese audiences feel close to, mainly because of the movie "The Lover" ("L'Amant"), which features the illicit relation between a French teenager and a wealthy Chinese man in 1929 Vietnam.

Annaud made the cinema adaptation of Marguerite Duras's semi-autobiographical novel in 1992 and became one of the few Western directors to have a feel for China and to use Chinese actors at a time when the country was still a mystery to most Westerners.

"The Lover" was never officially shown here, but is widely known among Chinese movie fans.

Annaud's 2001 film "Enemy at the Gates," about an intense duel between two snipers during the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, was released in China - among only a handful of foreign movies shown here at the time - and was a great success, making Annaud's name known to more Chinese.

Now the 69-year-old director has finally made his first visit to Shanghai, as head of the jury for the Shanghai International Film Festival, which opened last night. He will watch and evaluate 17 movies over the next nine days, and with the other jury members decide on the various award winners.

Before setting himself to his jury duties, Annaud talked with Shanghai Daily about his work, his vision, his passions, his current project in China, and his understanding of Chinese culture.

Child and explorer

"I find in myself a child and an explorer," he described himself. "All my life, I've been like a student. I like to immerse myself in different cultures."

Recently, Annaud has been immersing himself in Chinese culture, and has found it very similar in many ways to that of France.

"We are both very modern with new technology and we are also deeply rooted with rich culture and history. But we don't just get stuck in the past, we move on and forward to the future. I like that dynamic of China and the Chinese," he said.

"And it may sound strange to you, but I feel very much at home here in China."

He has spent a lot of time in China in the past two years, mainly in northern parts, including Inner Mongolia and Beijing, preparing for directing "Wolf Totem," an adaptation of the best-selling Chinese novel of the same name.

Only three weeks ago, Annaud and his crew found themselves caught in a snowstorm in the plains of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Annaud was always fascinated and intrigued by Asia, by Japanese and Chinese culture, and he bought many records of Chinese traditional music when he was a child, yet for a long time, admits that he was afraid to visit.

"I was afraid that I would miss it, that I would come and not understand the culture," he recalled. "I have to come for the right reason, which for me is to make a movie. That's the way for me to understand a country."

So here he is, working with Jiang Rong (birth name Lu Jiaming), author of "Wolf Totem" and "Farewell My Concubine" screenwriter Lu Wei.

The book, published in Chinese in 2004 and in English in 2008, had sold 2.5 million copies in Chinese by 2008, and it was estimated that the number of pirated copies would come to more than 30 million. It was also winner of the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007.

The book draws on the 11 years of personal experience of Lu Jiaming, who was sent to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). Young Han man Chen Zhen accidentally picked up a young wolf, with which he developed a bond and friendship, offering him in-depth understanding of wolf society as well as the nomadic community he stayed with on the grasslands.

In the book, Lu also considered how "small life," the individual life of any creature, becomes minimal when confronting "large life," the life of nature and the environment.

The environmental aspect was what first attracted Annaud to the book.

"It was the first enormous, total shock I had with the book. In the rest of the world, people think China is not conscious about environment, but this is the most beautiful book about environment I have read. It is very sincerely written from the heart of a man who respects and adores nature, and that is clearly and beautifully translated to the readers," he said.

"It's amazing that the book is not only written by a Chinese man, but also loved by so many readers in China. That's exciting for me and I have the impression that I will help the rest of the world to understand that China will possibly be a country that can be a leader in environmental issues in the future."

"The multi-layered book," as Annaud described it, struck a chord with him for other reasons too, one being the similar adventure he had experienced in his 20s - the same age as Lu and the protagonist in the book - at around the same time in 1960s.

After he graduated from film school, Annaud was sent to Cameroon in Africa to teach filmmaking and to a small village where nobody spoke French or English. Like Lu and Chen Zhen, the main protagonist of "Wolf Totem," he fell in love with the nature around him and started to learn about the local community.

Beautiful relation

"The book tells of the beautiful relation between the wolf and a young boy and I have been that young boy," Annaud said. "It's amazing that we had such similar adventures so far away from each other, with such different backgrounds. And the story just hit right to my heart, and felt very personal to me."

He added that learning about the society of wolves through the book was another theme that drew his attention. He was thrilled that so much of wolf society finds similarities in how humans live.

"They live in communities like us and are led by a leader, like us too, which is different from tigers, who live alone. Wolves are also very well-organized, whether they are attacking or defending. That's why they are so powerful that they worry human beings," he said.

"It's important for me to understand the world and the culture of wolves to shoot this movie."

Annaud has spent a lot of time researching and visiting the grasslands, at the exact spot that Lu stayed and where the story was set, accompanied by the author himself. Shooting may start as early as September, Annaud said. He believes he is now prepared for the harsh climate of the grasslands and for filming wolves.

Annaud has always been fascinated in the world of animals - he is an avid reader of books about animal behavior - and brought this interest to his work in "The Bear" (1988) and "Two Brothers" (2004).

Based on a true story, "The Bear" tells how an orphaned bear cub struggles to survive, following its attempts to befriend a wounded adult bear in the mountainous wilds of British Columbia in Canada, circa 1885. "Two Brothers" traces the paths of two separated tiger brothers in India, one of which is sold to a circus while the other lands in a zoo. The brothers meet a few months later as rivals in a tiger fighting game.

While shooting "Two Brothers," Annaud placed his film crew in cages, allowing them to concentrate on capturing the natural behavior of the tigers without having to worry about their own safety, a technique he will use again in "Wolf Totem."

"With 'The Bear,' I didn't shoot from the perspective of a human being, but rather, from that of a baby bear," he recalled.

"Shooting with animals is like shooting with kids. You have to take care of them very well, in terms of health and emotions. You have to really try to understand their emotions and have sincere communications with them. It's not so different from working with human actors - in order to reach the artistic effect, you have to understand and inspire their internal emotions through in-depth communications."

Sincere emotions are vital to the director, who considers this a key to becoming a good film director, whether working with human or animals.

"The most important thing in the filmmaking process comes from the heart, because audiences can see and feel directly what the director wants to deliver," he said.

"And for me, a movie is all about delivering a kind of feeling through stories and actors. And as a director, it's important to have something to deliver."

Invariably Annaud does, as he likes the learning process, especially when it concerns a culture and history that he little understands beforehand.

Different cultures

Annaud expressed his appreciation to have had contact with completely different cultures since he was young. He studied Latin and Greek and despite no common language strived to understand villagers in Cameroon at the beginning of his career.

"The first day I was in Cameroon, in my 20s, I found myself sitting on the ground in a small village, trying to communicate with a villager who understood no French or English," Annaud recalled.

Yet despite the lack of linguistic common ground, he felt a profound connection with the Cameroon villager.

"I felt that I understood him more than I understood any of my friends from film school."

"And I thought, this is amazing, if I understand him like that, I can probably understand people all around the world. And I would make my first movie about Africa."

He did, with debut "Black and White in Color" (1977), an anti-militaristic black comedy that draws from his experience in African countries.

"I feel very humbled by 125 years of cinema, and I don't want to just do another movie. I have to ask myself why. And I always try to do something a little more difficult to offer the audience a different experience," the director explained.

He has done so by making movies all over the world in a bid to understand different cultures and stories. In his most recent film "Black Gold" (2011), Annaud chose the Middle East, which he knew little about and wanted to explore and learn. The end product was an epic drama digging deep into local culture and issues, showing little-known sides of the Arab world to audiences.

Annaud urges Chinese directors to look further afield for inspiration too. "I feel a certain freedom by escaping my own country and enjoy the learning process of making films in other places. And I would encourage Chinese directors to try this," he said.

"You have the privilege of having Chinese communities all over the world, which means you have fascinating stories all over the globe - very Chinese and very international. This is great material for cinema and a great way to make Chinese movies abroad."