Director Feng Xiaogang (center) with actor Huang Xuan and actress Miao Miao at an event in Beijing to promote his upcoming film Youth that plots the ups and downs of a group of singers and dancers in a Chinese military troupe between the 1970s and 1990s. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Blockbusters usually boast a star-studded cast and an appealing theme tuned to please mainstream audiences, but Youth relies on neither of these two premises.

Except for actor Huang Xuan, who rose to prominence for the 2014 TV series Red Sorghum, the remainder of the cast is made up of mostly lesser-known performers.

Domestic reports say Feng selected the six young actresses, including Zhong Chuxi, Miao Miao and Yang Caiyu, from around 1,000 aspirants, placing harsh demands on their appearance and dancing talent.

"I asked all the audition members to wash off their makeup and put on simple clothes. Only natural faces could match my memories of those young, innocent female soldiers in the military art troupes," Feng explained in an earlier interview with host Jin Xing on her television talk show.

Before becoming a director, Feng had served in the People's Liberation Army as a stage designer for a military Peking Opera troupe between 1978 and 1984.

In his 2002 biography Wo Ba Qingchun Xiangei Ni (I Present My Youth to You), he wrote that his military life evoked many of his best memories.

He recalled his earliest memories of sexual attraction after he watched wet-haired, bare-necked female soldiers leaving a public bathhouse after taking a shower.