Jia (born in 1970) is a Chinese director, producer and screenwriter. He is considered the most important member of the Chinese sixth generation of directors. In 1993 he started studying film theory at the Peking Film Academy. He made his first three short films during his studies; One Day in Beijing (1994), Xiaoshan huijia (1995) and Du Du (1996) which brought him attention and enabled him to direct his first feature film Pickpocket (Xiao Wu, 1997). Later he made the internationally acclaimed Platform (Zhantai, 2001), comedy Unknown Pleasures (Ren xiao yao, 2002), dramas World (Shijie, 2004.) and Still Life (Sanxia haoren, 2006). Then he directed two documentaries and one short drama and in 2008 returned to feature film with the film Er shi si cheng ji (24 City).