Now 47 years old, Du Jie ASC initially studied painting in his early years. From 1993 to 1997, he studied at the Attached High School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, developing a keen interest in cinematography during this period. From 1997 to 2001, he continued his education at the Beijing Film Academy, majoring in cinematography.
Du’s talent in cinematography became evident through his collaboration with director Ning Hao. In 2004, Du Jie filmed writer-director Ning’s feature Mongolian Ping Pong. The film was nominated at various film festivals and Du received the Best Cinematography award at the Valladolid International Film Festival in 2005. The following year, their collaboration on the comedy Crazy Stone received 26 awards and nominations, while achieving commercial success and becoming a phenomenon of that year.
With the prosperity of the Chinese film market, Du has collaborated with various directors on multiple commercially successful films. The cumulative box office of the films he participated in has reached ¥12.8 billion RMB, including the highly successful Detective Chinatown Trilogy and other commercial hits. The first instalment of the series received a nomination for Best Cinematography at the 2016 Gold Horse Film Festival. The sequels grossed ¥3.3 billion and ¥4.4 billion RMB, respectively. Detective Chinatown 3 set a record with a first-day box office of ¥1.05 billion RMB, creating the highest single-day and opening-day global box office records for a single-market film.
While working on commercial films, Du has also shot many critically acclaimed arthouse projects, including One Mile Above, The Silent Holy Stones and Lethal Hostage. Also among them, The Wasted Times received numerous nominations in various film festivals, with Du earning nominations for Best Cinematography at the Asian Film Award and the Golden Rooster Awards.
