BEIJING, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A film about late Chinese composer Xian Xinghai, co-produced by China and Kazakhstan, premiered Monday in Beijing and will be screened in both countries from Friday.

"Composer," starring both Chinese and Kazakhstani actors, tells the story of Xian's life in Almaty, where he got stranded while trying to return to China from Russia and composed several works in the 1940s.

Xian, who died in 1945 at the age of 40, is best known in China for his work "Yellow River Cantata," which premiered in the city of Yan'an, a former revolutionary base of the Communist Party of China, in 1939.

As an opening film of the 2019 Beijing International Film Festival, "Composer" is one of the cooperative projects between China and Kazakhstan after the two countries signed a cooperation agreement on film production in June 2017.