Han Sanming
Biography
Han Sanming (Chinese: 韩三明; born 1971) is a Chinese actor and coal miner, known for his roles in films directed by his cousin Jia Zhangke. Initially, he was seen only in small roles or cameos, but was then cast in one of the lead roles, as a coal miner looking for his wife and daughter, in Still Life. The film premiered at the 2006 Venice Film Festival and went on to win a Golden Lion award. Of note, his characters are also named "Han Sanming" in the films.
Known For & Full Filmography31 Titles
Movie - 2013, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Four people in different provinces are driven to violent ends: An angry miner is enraged by corruption in his village. A migrant discovers the possibilities of owning a firearm. A receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one job to the next.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2006, 2h 15m • as San-Ming Han
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A community police officer is assigned as first party secretary to push an old-neighborhood renewal. He wins residents’ trust but collapses from overwork; his family honors his wish to donate organs, turning “small” neighborly issues into a truly big deal.
Movie - 2026, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • as 酒商
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2017, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Chong er and San yuan, who are gangsters, lived in a small city northeast of China. They felt lost and confused about the future. San worked at a factory. He and Chong helped Qi ge, the gang leader, to collect debt. Chong despised his vocation and wanted to become a cross talk actor. Lei fu, an entrepreneur, looked down upon Qi. Qi did nothing considered the scale and influence of Lei's company. Lei's project failed thanks to San. He was furious. The dispute was ended through the mediation of his old friends. San was beaten, and his hatred grew deeper. Chong's life was not as good as expected. The money he saved for learning cross talk was not in use. Qi finally got a chance to defeat Lei. However, there was no real winner in this battle. Lei's company went bankrupt. San kept on living an aimless life, while Chong left the small city and kept on pursuing his cross talk dream.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
After a countryside party, several friends vanish and Lin Man is the only witness. A psychiatrist, Fang Ziqing, slowly opens her up unraveling a long-buried secret and a moral struggle where one thought for good or evil decides the outcome.
Movie - 2019, 2h 15m • as Taxi Driver
Poet Wolf (Lang) chose to starve himself to death, in a beautiful flower blossoming Spring. This is a poetic, aesthetic and brutal film that adapted from the true stoy of Poet Wo Fu's suicide.
Movie - 2024, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2023, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2016, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The closure of an unprofitable state-run coal mine in Shanxi, China forces three middle-aged men who worked there to search for employment elsewhere.
Movie - 2026, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2022, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2024, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
At an unknown time, people who had never been masked, met in the town of Qinghongli. The boy from the city, looking for something lost, accidentally meets a mysterious girl holding a camera and falls into a short and drowsy dream. The young people in the town have illusions and impulses about love, and wantonly respond to life; the hotel owner occasionally immerses himself in his neon world and is not disturbed; the dumb drunken man has an insight into this field, as if he has a connection with the heaven .The old lady is still sitting on the bench, the old train shuttles through the valley jungle, and the whistle sounds every morning and night, entering the dreams of countless people.
Movie - 2017, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Han Dong adapts his own 1998 novel, about a group of young poets accidentally caught up in an inexplicable dispute with local hoodlums and security guards.
Movie - 2004, 2h 15m • as Sanming
At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.
Movie - 2006, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Jia Zhangke travels with painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand as they as they meet everyday workers in the throes of social turmoil. Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by China's Three Gorges Dam project. Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being "de-constructed" by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu's paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects' shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.
Movie - 2001, 2h 15m • as Sanming
China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.
Movie - 2014, 2h 15m • as Fake Wang Liang's Father
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2019, 2h 15m • as Father
Yan is an illegal second child born during the One-Child policy. To avoid government punishment, Yan's parents hid their oldest daughter in the countryside and raised Yan as a girl. Now a young adult, Yan struggles with his gender identity and being treated as an outcast in a conservative society. His sole escape is drifting his father's old taxi through abandoned parking lots.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A slave sold to a cotton factory by his own brother, with the help of the dead, returned for revenge with silent rage.
Movie - 2024, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Sanming and his wife You Hua in a village to raise sheep for a living, You Hua and health is not good, Sanming has always wanted to apply for subsidies with the village, a phone call, the daughter He Ye informed Sanming to get his son-in-law Xiao Wang home, the story from Sanming to buy a suit...
Movie - 2024, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2016, 2h 15m • as Self
Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns to the shooting locations of his films, along with his actors, friends and close collaborators. Jia recalls the inspiration sources for his movies, such as Platform, Still Life and A Touch of Sin. The film is the memory of a filmmaker and of a country in convulsion, China, which reveals itself little by little.
Movie - 2020, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Chen Na, a young female teacher in the northwest, learned that the children have to cross a "ghostly gorge" on their way to school, which is very dangerous, and some of them have to give up their studies because of this. Through the Internet, she let people outside the mountains know about the children's situation, and with the assistance of people from all walks of life and the government, they built a "bridge of love" for the children.
Movie - 2019, 2h 15m • as 老王头
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2020, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Lv Jianjiang went to the first day of the ancient village police office in the village, decided to first come to a "micro-visit" to objectively understand the general situation of the ancient village. Because of his excellent work, Lv Jianjiang was transferred to Anjianqiao police station as director.
Movie - 2018, 2h 15m • as 村主任
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 2018, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
At a small town in the west of China in 1935, the county magistrate's funny accent raised a series of misguided affairs, deduced a bizarre and absurd story with one and another climaxes.