On May 6, the "Chinese Film Audience Satisfaction Survey" for the May Day period in 2025 was released. The five films in the satisfaction survey were of different types and themes, and all received "satisfactory" reviews from the audience. The first place was "Dumpling Queen", which was the first time in the past three years that a non-action film won the May Day satisfaction championship (2024 "The Besieged City of Kowloon" and 2023 "Lord of the Sky") . "The Wind" and "Gold Hunter: Game" ranked second and third respectively.
The survey results show that the audience satisfaction score for this year's May Day movie was 83.6 points, an increase of 0.4 points year-on-year, ranking first in satisfaction for the spring and May Day periods surveyed in the same period in recent years.
This survey was conducted by the China Film Art Research Center and Enlight Media. It is a comprehensive film evaluation system independent of box office, ticket sales and social networking sites. The survey samples are divided into two groups: ordinary audiences and professional audiences, covering first-, second-, third- and fourth-tier cities across the country.
Stills from "Dumpling Queen"
Unlike the May Day schedule in 2023 and 2024, which were dominated by action + comedy + romance films, the May Day schedule in 2025 will present a more diverse and inclusive content structure. The five films mainly investigated include rich genres such as biography, comedy, suspense, crime, and road literature, providing sufficient viewing options for more segmented audiences.
The comprehensive satisfaction evaluations of ordinary and professional audiences for the five films surveyed on May Day in 2025 were similar, with "Queen of Dumplings" ranking first, and "A Good Start to Life" and "The Vast Horizon is My Love" both ranking in the last two; only the evaluations of the two films ranking second and third in single-film satisfaction were slightly different. Professional audiences gave higher evaluations to "The Wind Kills", which had relatively stronger "authorship", while ordinary audiences were more satisfied with "Gold Hunting Game", which had more prominent commercial attributes.
The overall satisfaction evaluations of general audiences and professional audiences are similar.
In the professional audience evaluation system, high satisfaction scores for each indicator are obviously more concentrated.
In the general audience evaluation system, "The Dumpling Queen" scored the highest in the period in six indicators: the performance of the main actors, non-boringness, positive energy, profoundness of thought and communication method.
The May Day period in 2025 scored 83.4 points for viewing, 83.0 points for ideology, and 84.7 points for popularity. Compared with the same period in the previous two years, it was the first time that the three major satisfaction indexes exceeded 83 points, and the popularity of the period increased significantly, which was 2.9 points and 2.7 points higher than the May Day period in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
All three satisfaction indexes exceeded 83 points.
The May Day holiday is traditionally a peak season for mass travel, and moviegoers are relatively diverted to theaters. However, some of the high-satisfaction films in the 2025 May Day schedule have stimulated the enthusiasm of moviegoers to share and spread with their high-quality creations, and have attracted high attention and heated discussions both inside and outside the industry. Among them, "The Dumpling Queen" and "The Wind Killer" have performed relatively well in terms of dissemination. At the same time, supported by high satisfaction, "The Dumpling Queen" has always maintained its leading daily box office, and the proportion of moviegoers has steadily increased from May 2 to 4; the box office of "The Wind Killer" has continued to fall from May 3 to 4, and as of 19:00 on May 5, the proportion of moviegoers has achieved a three-day increase.
In 2025, the May Day schedule of various types of films will go hand in hand, effectively enriching the choice of film viewing, and the box office of high-satisfaction high-quality films is on an upward trend. However, the survey also found that on the one hand, the exploration and innovation of the marketing model of production units, publicity and distribution parties and even theaters are relatively insufficient, and they have failed to effectively stimulate the enthusiasm for film viewing. Even "The Dumpling Queen", which leads in satisfaction and box office, has not formed a significant head-driven effect; on the other hand, due to the relatively traditional distribution model, literary and artistic films with high audience satisfaction are choosing to be released across the board, lacking scheduling guarantees in the fierce competition, or missing the possibility of long-term fermentation. These problems presented by the schedule are worthy of deep thought in the industry. Practitioners need to embrace new changes with a more positive attitude, explore new models and new ways of playing, so as to better meet and accurately activate the increasingly segmented and scenario-based viewing needs.
