盲探 | Blind Detective

He used to be a highly gifted police detective but was forced to retire after getting blinded on duty. Since then he earns his living by solving cold cases for the police. She is an up-and-coming hit team detective who has been feeling guilty ever since her childhood friend went missing after she refused to go out with her ten years ago. On witnessing how brilliantly he solves a case, she decides to seek his assistance to find her friend. He accepts the invitation with his own personal agenda in mind.

Directed by Johnnie To | Starring : Andy Lau, Sammi Cheng, Tao Guo, Ying-Ting Yiu, Hoi-Pang Lo | Presented at Cannes Film Festival

过界 | Bends

Bends straddles the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border and tells the story of Anna, an affluent housewife and Fai, her chauffeur, and their unexpected friendship as they each negotiate the pressures of Hong Kong life and the city’s increasingly complex relationship to mainland China. Fai is struggling to find a way to bring his pregnant wife and daughter over the Hong Kong border from Shenzhen so as to avoid the 2nd child penalty in China, even though he crosses the border easily every day working as a chauffeur for Anna. Anna, in contrast, is struggling to keep up the façade of her ostentatious lifestyle, after the disappearance of her husband, amid financial turmoil. Their two lives collide in a common space, the car.

Directed by Flora Lau | Starring : Carina Lau, Kun Chen, Yuan Tian, Lawrence Cheng, Stephanie Che | Presented at Cannes Film Festival

天注定 | A Touch of Sin

An angry miner revolts against the corruption of his village leaders.  A migrant worker at home for the New Year discovers the infinite possibilities a firearm can offer. A pretty receptionist at a sauna is pushed to the limit when a rich client assaults her. A young factory worker goes from job to job trying to improve his lot in life. Four people, four different provinces. A reflection on contemporary China: that of an economic giant slowly being eroded by violence, A Touch of Sin weaves together four strands, spanning the bustling southern metropolis of Guangzhou to rural townships.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Wu Jiang, Baoqiang Wang, Jia-yi Zhang, Luo Lanshan | Presented at Cannes Film Festival

浮城谜事 | Mystery

Lu Jie has no idea her husband Yongzhao is leading a double life, until the day she sees him entering a hotel with a young woman. Her world crumbles – and it’s just the beginning. A few hours later, the young woman dies beneath the wheels of a car. The police officer in charge of the case refuses to believe her death was accidental.

Directed by Ye Lou | Starring : Hao Qin, Lei Hao, Xi Qi, Ying Qu, Yawen Zhu | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival

黑血 | Black Blood

Not everything is progress in China. Less and less rain means that the inhabitants of Inner Mongolia have to do everything to survive. For instance, sell their own blood. And in order to sell enough blood, you have to drink. A drama of fate shot in impressively expressive black-and-white. In a remote mountain village in the northwest of China, close to a nuclear test zone, the poverty-stricken Xiaolin sells his blood to pay his daughter’s school fees. Together with his wife Xiaojuan, he tries to set up a business. At first that seems very lucrative, but then fate strikes: it turns out that both Xiaolin and Xiaojuan are infected with HIV. Just like thousands of other poor people, who illegally sell their blood to be able to buy something as essential as water. Black Blood, supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, tells a small and personal story against the background of an ecological disaster. In the valley where the film was shot, there is also in reality no water anymore. ‘Water is more valuable than blood and many villages have already been deserted,’ according to Zhang Miaoyan. Zhang films the poor odd-jobbers for more than two hours in hypnotic black-and-white and – very briefly – in equally stunning colours.

Directed by Miaoyan Zhang | Starring : Mengjuan Liu, Danhui Mao, Yingying | Presented at Rotterdam Film Festival, Kerala Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Las Palmas Film Festival, Jeonju Film Festival, Montréal Film Festival, Rome Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

日照重庆 | Chongqing Blues

Award-winning Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai explores new territories with his latest film Chongqing Blues, which was Mainland China’s only entry in the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival 2010. Inspired by a true hostage case that happened in Chongqing, the film digs into the heart of a guilt-ridden father who seeks redemption after the tragic death of his estranged son. Upon returning from his voyages, shipmaster Lin Quanhai is informed that his son was gunned down by the police half a year ago in a supermarket robbery. The tragedy prompts Lin to return to his Chongqing hometown to find out what happened to his son, whom he hasn’t seen in 13 years. His quest eventually brings him to the painful realization that he is the one to blame, having inflicted indelible damages to the ones closest to him through his long absence and negligence.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Xueqi Wang, Bingbing Fan, Hao Qin, Yi Zi, Feier Li | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, London Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

脸 | Face

A Taiwanese filmmaker makes a film based on the myth of Salomé at the Louvre. Even though he speaks neither French nor English, he insists on giving the part of King Herod to the French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. To give the film a chance at the box-office, the production company gives the role of Salomé to a world famous model. But problems arise as soon as filming begins… Amidst all this confusion, the director suddenly learns of his mother’s death. The producer flies to Taipei, to attend the funeral. The director falls into a deep sleep where his mother’s spirit does not seem to want to leave her old apartment. The producer has no choice but to wait, alone and lost in a strange city. As after a very long voyage, filming will resume with all who were lost in the underground of the Louvre.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Fanny Ardant, Yi-Ching Lu, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Laetitia Casta | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Transilvania Film Festival

复仇 | Vengeance

What is vengeance if you can’t remember who it is you’re avenging? Isn’t memory what vengeance is all about? Vengeance is always personal, and usually results in at least a few more deaths than originally intended, many of them more than a little mordantly ironic. That’s part of what makes a revenge thriller thrilling, and Johnnie To’s terrific, slow-burn triad actioner Vengeance, adds a memory glitch to those thrills. Vengeance is a rich, fragrant reduction of To’s favorite themes (male bonding and codes of loyalty, the triad underworld, vengeance) trademarks (slow-motion clouds of blood, unforgettable set-pieces, impossibly sleek cinematography, brooding men, black humor) and actors. One splendid difference: Vengeance stars French actor and singer Johnny Hallyday (adding a nice tip of the chapeau to the French noirs of the ‘60s, when Hallyday had his rock and roll heyday). Hallyday plays François Costello, a Parisian restaurant owner who is in Macau at the request of his daughter—to avenge a savage attack on her family. Costello crosses paths with a crack team of triad hit men, whom he then hires to carry out his own revenge plan—a plan growing increasingly hazy due to his deteriorating memory. The craggy, lived-in face of Hallyday is as riveting as To’s mad scenes of mayhem, which include a fierce nighttime shootout as clouds pass over the full moon and—shootouts being To’s stock in trade—an epic battle in a junkyard that has to be seen to be believed. Vengeance, indeed, is a dish best served by Johnnie To.

Directed by Johnnie To | Starring : Johnny Hallyday, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Ka Tung Lam, Simon Yam, Suet Lam | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Oldenburg Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Milwaukee Film Festival

春风沉醉的夜晚 | Spring Fever

Nanjing, present day, springtime. Wang Ping’s wife suspects him of adultery. She hires Lou Haitao to spy on him and discovers that her husband’s lover is a man, Jian Cheng. It’s with this man that Lou Haitao and his girlfriend, Li Jing, form a torrid love triangle. For all three, it’s the beginning of asphyxiating sultry nights of physical abandon that exalt the senses. A journey into the confines of jealousy and obsessive love.

Directed by Ye Lou | Starring : Hao Qin, Sicheng Chen, Zhuo Tan, Wei Wu, Songwen Zhang | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Miyazaki Film Festival

一半海水一半火焰 | Ocean Flame

Wong Yiu was a very shameless person and a blackmailer until one day he met a waitress named Ni Chen. He thought Ni Chen was like any other girls that could be controlled by him, but her stubbornness was way beyond his imagination. As time goes by, they both lost their ways and losing themselves in the process. He was not as free as he once was. Insanity causes him to end her life. Eight years later, Wong Yiu stepped out from the jail. He carried a gun and went to look for Ni Chen’s mother at her home wishing to fulfill his own will.

Directed by Fendou Liu | Starring : Fan Liao, Monica Mok, Simon Yam, Suet Lam, Shiu Hung Hui | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival

二十四城记 | 24 City

A masterful film from Jia Zhang-ke, the renowned director chronicles the dramatic closing of a once-prosperous state-owned aeronautics factory in Chengdu, a city in Southwest China, and its conversion into a sprawling luxury apartment complex. Bursting with poetry, pop songs and striking visual detail, the film weaves together unforgettable stories from three generations of workers – some real, some played by actors – into a vivid portrait of the human struggle behind China’s economic miracle.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Joan Chen, Jianbin Chen, Liping Lü | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, London Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, Cleveland Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, St. Louis Film Festival

停车 | Parking

On Mother’s Day in Taipei, Chen Mo makes a date for dinner with his wife, hoping to bring their estranged relationship back together. While buying a cake on his way home, a car unexpectedly double parks next to his car, preventing his exit. For the entire night, Chen Mo searches the floors of a nearby apartment building for the owner of the illegally parked car, and encounters a succession of strange events and eccentric characters: an old couple living with their precocious granddaughter who have lost their only son, a one-armed barbershop owner cooking fish head soup, a mainland Chinese prostitute trying to escape her pimp’s cruel clutches, and a Hong Kong tailor embroiled in debt and captured by underground loan sharks. After many hardships, Chen Mo finally gets his car out of the parking space, and, with new friends riding beside him, advances toward a new horizon in life.

Directed by Mong-Hong Chung | Starring : Chen Chang, Gwei Lun-Mei, Leon Dai, Chapman To, Jack Kao | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival

夜车 | Night Train

What threatens to be a fairly inconspicuous oddball drama, opening as it does with unsmiling court bailiff Wu Hongyan traveling to an out-of-town singles dance which ends in a predictably uncomfortable fashion, soon turns in to a rather nasty game of sexual cat-and-mouse as she falls in lust with the husband of one of the women she has had to help detain. Having flown under the radar of Chinese censors, it’s a slow and often painful film about a woman in search of love and affection in all the wrong places. Be warned: just as you think you’re on the home straight, Yinan inserts a repulsive, near-unwatchable scene of a carthorse being flayed to (what looks like) death; a cruelly over-egged metaphor if there ever was one.

Directed by Yi’nan Diao | Starring : Dan Liu, Liang Qi, Zhengjia Wang, Yongsheng Li, Halyan Meng | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Athens Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, London Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival

盲山 | Blind Mountain

There are two ways to take on Li Yang’s potent, concise Blind Mountain, and both have horns: as the howling social-critique screed it was intended to be, and as a Chinese realist version of the “white trash” exploitation epics of the American ’60s and ’70s — which makes the dynamic of the story universally human, not exclusively Chinese. But Chinese it is in actuality, through and through: simply put, unemployed college grad Bai accepts a job to collect medicinal herbs in the remote northern country, and after landing in a secluded village wakes up to find herself literally sold into slavery, as a bought-and-paid-for bride for a local ne’er-do-well.

Directed by Yang Li | Starring : Lu Huang, Youan Yang, Yunle He, Yuling Zhang, Yingao Jia | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival, Portland Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival

左右 | In Love We Trust

A divorced couple learns that the only way to save their little daughter, who suffers from a blood disease, is to have another child. Now both remarried, Mei Zhu and Xiao Lu are forced to test their love and their commitment to one another by putting their current relationships in danger. A story of parenthood, love, married life, betrayal, trust and giving, which touches upon changes in contemporary society and family life, as well as the moral and ethical dilemmas brought on by modernity.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Weiwei Liu, Jia-yi Zhang, Nan Yu, Taisheng Chen, Yuanyuan Gao | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Pula Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival

鬼域 | Re-Cycle

The first novel of a young woman writer, Ting-yin, pen-named Chu Xun, has become the bestseller in South East Asia. Her novel is a love story that touches the hearts of all her readers. Her manager, Abby announces her next title in her autograph party. The Recycle, it deals with the supernatural forces. Her readers eagerly await the release of her new book with high expectations of her fictional work to be true to life. The film opens with Ting-yin starting work on the Recycle. After drafting a chapter, she stops. She even deletes the file which contains the draft from her computer. Later, she begins to see weird things. Some of the phenomenon cannot be explained. Ting-yin feels that the supernatural events depicted in her fictional work begin to unfold in the real world! Ting-yin finds it increasingly hard to tell what is real and what is imaginary… But she soon learns that perhaps she should follow the mysterious hints into the other world. Isn’t it exactly the subject matter that she’s working on in the Recycle? By having the experience herself, wouldn’t it be the best way to learn of the inexplicable? One night, Ting-yin decides to follow the hints into the other world, in which she has the experience of real and pure horror!

Directed by Oxide Pang Chun, Danny Pang | Starring : Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou, Siu-Ming Lau, Rain Li, Zeng Qi Qi | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival, Cleveland Film Festival

江城夏日 | Luxury Car

In this emotionally taut narrative, Li Qi Ming travels from his small village to the city of Wuhan, determined to fulfill his wife’s last wish of seeing her son. But instead of finding his son, he discovers his daughter working as a karaoke bar escort, forcing him to come to terms with their long-estranged relationship and the tenuous future of his family. Director Wang Chao uses Li Qi Ming to represent the painful reality of thousands of parents who have lost contact with their children through rural exodus and political upheaval in China.

Directed by Chao Wang | Starring : Yuan Tian, Youcai Wu, He Huang, Yiqing Li | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival

颐和园 | Summer Palace

From the director of Purple Butterfly and Suzhou River comes Lou Ye’s sprawling epic Summer Palace . Yu Hong (Lei Hao) is a rebellious young woman from a small Chinese town transplanted to a politically charged Beijing University in the late 1980s. The country’s social turmoil is witnessed through its disaffected youth, whose newfound sexuality and activism culminate in violent suppression. Spanning nearly 20 years of modern Chinese history, Summer Palace projects the country’s struggle for definition through the eyes and heart of a young woman illequipped to handle it. While drifting between the arms of two men, her love fervent for both, Yu Hong’s existential crisis mirrors that of her nation. Will the chaos of society lead her to its same tragic fate?

Directed by Ye Lou | Starring : Hao Lei, Lin Cui, Yihong Duan, Xiaodong Guo, Xueyun Bai | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Miyazaki Film Festival

最好的时光 | Three Times

Three stories of women and men: in 1966, “A Time for Love,” a soldier searches for a young woman he met one afternoon playing pool; “A Time for Freedom,” set in a bordello in 1911, revolves around a singer’s longing to escape her surroundings; in 2005 in Taipei, “A Time for Youth” dramatizes a triangle in which a singer has an affair with a photographer while her partner suffers. In the first two stories, letters are crucial to the outcome; in the third, it’s cell-phone calls, text messages, and a computer file. Over the years between the tales, as sexual intimacy becomes more likely and words more free, communication recedes.

Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou | Starring : Qi Shu, Chen Chang, Shi-Zheng Chen, Fang Mei, Lawrence Ko | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Indianapolis Film Festival, Yerevan Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival

青红 | Shanghai Dreams

In the mid-1960s the Chinese government, fearing conflict with the Soviet Union, called for strategically important factories to be moved inland to form a “Third Line Of Defence”. Answering their country’s call, innumerable workers and their families left their homes in such large cities as Shanghai and Beijing and followed the factories to the barren terrain of western China. Set twenty years later, as the country begins to reform and open up to the rest of the world, Wang Xiaoshuai’s moving film tells the poignant tale of one such displaced family and the conflict that arises when 19 year old Qinghong finds love for the first time with a local boy, much to the disapproval of her father who dreams of returning his family to Shanghai.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Yuanyuan Gao, Bin Li, Hao Qin, Yang Tang, Anlian Yao | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, La Rochelle Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Indianapolis Film Festival, Alba Regia Film Festival

黑社会 | Election

Every two years senior members of Hong Kong’s oldest Triad, The Wo Shing Society, elect a new chairman. Fierce rivalries emerge between the two eligible candidates. Lok, respected by the Uncles is the favorite to win. His rival Big D will stop at nothing to change this by going against hundreds of years of Triad tradition – influencing the vote with money and violence. When Wo Shing’s ancient symbol of leadership, the Dragon’s Head Baton, goes missing, a ruthless struggle for power erupts and the race to retrieve the Baton threatens to tear Wo Shing in two. Can Wo Shing balance their traditional brotherhood ways with the cut-throat modern world of 21st century business?

Directed by Johnnie To | Starring : Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Louis Koo, Nick Cheung, Ka Tung Lam | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, La Rochelle Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival

十面埋伏 | House of Flying Daggers

Towards the end of the Tang dynasty, the Emperor’s rule is waning and corruption is rife, and many groups are formed in society to challenge the authorities. Out of all the groups, the most powerful is The House Of Flying Daggers. The government decides to send Feng Tian County’s top captains Leo and Jin to capture the new leader within 10 days. Leo suspects that Mei, the beautiful new dancer at the Peony Pavilion, is the daughter of the old leader, and Leo decides to send Jin disguised as a warrior called Wind to rescue Mei, and to ensnare her trust so she’ll lead them to the secret headquarters of The House Of Flying Daggers. But as Jin and Mei spend more time together, they begin to develop feelings and desire for each other. However danger is lurking from all corners, and can Jin and Mei really love each other when there are secrets being hidden from both sides?

Directed by Yimou Zhang | Starring : Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, Dandan Song, Jun Guo | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Copenhagen Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, London Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Dublin Film Festival, Iceland Film Festival, Cairo Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival

旅程 | Passages

A boy and a girl having failed their university exam try to take another path in life by believing in miraculous solutions in the big city. With their parents’ money meant for buying books, they set off for a long journey to seek fortune.

Directed by Yang Chao | Starring : Geng Le, Jieping Chang, Haofeng Xu | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, La Rochelle Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival, Alès Film Festival

鲁宾逊漂流记 | Robinson’s Crusoe

The film follows Robinson, a very succesfull real estate broker, who lives in a modern hotel in Taipei. But all the success also hides a lonely man, whose relations are becoming distant, including friends and lovers; Robinson’s dream is the Crusoe, an island on the Caribbean, which he wants to try purchase.

Directed by Cheng-sheng Lin | Starring : Leon Dai, Shiang-chyi Chen, Angelica Lee, Kuei-Mei Yang, Phoenix Cheng | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival

紫蝴蝶 | Purple Butterfly

1928. Manchuria. Itami, a young Japanese man, falls deeply in love with Cynthia, a beautiful Chinese girl. Their brief happiness ends when he is called home for his military service and they are forced to part. Returning sorrowfully from the train station where she has bid her lover farewell, Cynthia witnesses her brother’s bloody murder at the hands of Japanese right-wing extremists. Three years later, Shanghai has been unofficially occupied by Japan. The city is tense, rife with violence and barely contained anarchy. Cynthia – now known as Ding Hui – is working for Purple Butterfly, a resistance group planning to assassinate Yamamoto, head of the Japanese secret service. Itami is also in Shanghai, operating as a secret agent and reporting directly to Yamamoto. Arriving at Shanghai station to meet his fiancée, Szeto, a young Chinese man, is mistaken by the assembled resistance fighters for the assassin they have engaged to eliminate Yamamoto. Violence erupts and Szeto’s fiancée is shot dead in the crossfire. Szeto escapes with the Purple Butterfly members, all of whom believe him to be the hired killer. Only Ding Hui realises the truth… Thus three destinies are linked by chance, and three fates set in tragic motion.

Directed by Ye Lou | Starring : Ziyi Zhang, Ye Liu, Yuanzheng Feng, Tôru Nakamura, Bingbing Li | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival

明日天涯 | All Tomorrow’s Parties

In a post-apocalyptic 21st century, Continental Asia lives under the rule of the political and religious sect Gui Dao, which blends Maoist rhetorics with Buddhist iconography… Zhuai and his younger brother Mian are arrested and deported to a camp called Prosperity for re-education. Survival in the camp means hunger, bureaucratic rules, degradation and humiliation. After the catastrophic fall of the sect, the guards of the camp escape, leaving the inmates “free”. Zhuai and Mian wander around before leaving the camp together with beautiful Xuelan and her baby. They find themselves in the desert wastelands of their post-war post-industrial world. They try to rediscover everyday life in a shabby apartment of an abandoned mining town. Are their dreams only of a virtual future?

Directed by Nelson Yu Lik-wai | Starring : Wei Wei Zhao, Yi’nan Diao, Yong-won Cho, Ren Na  | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Entrevues Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival

二弟 | Drifters

Would-be immigrant Er Di is back in China, expelled from the United States for working illegally. While in the U.S. he fathered a child, and when his American-born son comes to China for a visit, Er Di is barred from seeing him. At the same time, Er Di becomes involved with a beautiful member of a touring Shanghai opera company. Caught between his past and his future, his son’s culture and his own, Er Di seeks bonds with both.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Yihong Duan, Yan Shu, Yiwei Zhao, Yang Tang, Juyong Liu | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival

开往春天的地铁 | Spring Subway

Director Zhang Yibai makes an impressive debut with Spring Subway, a stylish urban romance about the silent suffering of a modern Chinese couple. Geng Le is Jianbin, a recently unemployed Beijing urbanite whose marriage to designer Xiaohui is hitting a difficult patch after nearly seven years of matrimony. Xiaohui finds friendship – and possibly more – with a customer, while Jianbin keeps up appearances by going to work every morning and riding the Beijing subway all day. On the subway, life continues for him, as he views various couples falling in and out of love. He even becomes emotionally involved with a schoolteacher, and slowly the wall of silence between the married couple becomes ever more impenetrable. Zhang Yibai finds rich territory for exploration among these emotionally-stilted modern Chinese, who might be able to make their lives work if only they could communicate. Shot with stylish, enthralling cinematic panache, Spring Subway is an offbeat and stunning work from an important new voice in Chinese cinema.

Directed by Yibai Zhang | Starring : Geng Le, Jinglei Xu, Yuanyuan Gao, Yang Zhang, Lan Ke | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

任逍遥 | Unknown Pleasures

Unknown Pleasures, sequel to the widely praised Platform, again focuses on a generation of Chinese kids. In fragmentary observations, Jia sketches a picture of the lethargy of today’s youth, a generation that has grown up with technological gadgets, advertising and Internet. Jia refers to moments in the eventful year 2001, when an unemployed man blew up a whole building and the Olympic Summer Games of 2008 were granted to Beijing. In as far as the scenes were not improvised, the script of the film was inspired by work of the philosopher Zhuangzi, a Taoist who argues in favour of enjoying the (unknown) pleasures of life. The two unemployed kids Xiao Ji and Bin Bin have plenty of time for pleasures like hanging out and falling in love. In the case of Xiao Ji the subject of his affections is Qiao Qiao, a dancer and model for an advertising campaign for a major Mongolian brand of drink. The fact that Qiao Qiao has a dangerous friend does not make much impression on Xiao Ji: he takes his inspiration from American crime films and most wants to die young. Bin Bin does not have much faith in the future either. His girlfriend is going to Beijing to study. She wants to become a businesswoman, while Bin Bin’s ambitions do not extend any further than karaoke and cartoons.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Wei Wei Zhao, Qiong Wu, Hongwei Wang, Zhubin Li | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival

双瞳 | Double Vision

Taipei, the teeming capital of Taiwan, is a city in which the high-tech trappings of modern life compete with beliefs that reach back four millennia into Chinese history. It is a place where ghosts are considered as real as skyscrapers, and in which one troubled police officer comes up against an evil so dark that it threatens not only his life, but his very soul. Ace detective Huang Huo-tu is falling apart. As payback for blowing the whistle on corruption in the force, he’s relegated to the do-nothing job of Foreign Affairs Officer. His fellow policemen have turned on him, and his wife, Ching-fang, is filing for divorce. But, then, three grisly murders shake up the department. The victims are unrelated, but the Coroner finds a mysterious black fungus in their brains, along with evidence that they had all died in a hallucinatory state.

Directed by Kuo-fu Chen | Starring : Tony Leung Ka Fai, Rene Liu, Leon Dai, David Morse, Kuei-Mei Yang | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival