The audiences watch a film at a cinema in Shanghai on November 12, 2021. Top: A man walks past a poster for movie The Battle at Lake Changjin in a cinema in Shanghai on October 10, 2021. Photos: VCG

 Animated comedy I Am What I Am has become the top-scoring film in audience satisfaction among Chinese movies screened during the 2021 year-end and 2022 New Year's Day movie-going period.

It earned 85.6 out of 100 points in the latest survey co-conducted by the China Film Art Research Center. It outshone the tear-jerker film on China's COVID-19 battle Embrace Again, the comedy about middle-age romance B for Busy and crime thriller Fireflies in the Sun.

Before the release of the survey results, the animated movie had already won applause from critics and moviegoers alike for not only bringing the "lion dance," a folk art belonging to China's intangible cultural heritage, to the big screen but also for its realistic, worldly approach.

Unfolding from a brief introduction to the lion dance (a centuries-old folk dance performed to celebrate Chinese New Year), it follows an underdog teenager in Guangdong Province. He joins hands with two friends to pursue a dream against all odds - becoming the best lion dance performer.

Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency, said the "down-to-earth" film signals a change of direction in Chinese animated filmmaking. It draws inspiration from ordinary people struggling to make miracles happen in daily life instead of gods in mythology stories.