这里，那里 | Here, There

Three interwoven stories of contemporary China. In the snowy forests of northern China, a lonely man herds reindeer and busies himself with his daily tasks, looking forward to visits from his wife and son. In Shanghai, a young restaurant worker becomes drawn to a troubled young woman and tries to care for her. In Paris, a young Chinese student is robbed of his passport. He receives unexpected help from an elderly compatriot who knows the ins and outs of their new city.

Directed by Sheng Lu | Starring : Yulai Lu, Lu Huang, Anliao Yao, Deshun Wang, Yan Bo Bai | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival

夺命金 | Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle tells the story of three characters: an ordinary bank teller turned financial analyst is forced to sell high risk securities to her customers in order to meet her sales target; a small-time thug delves into the futures index hoping to earn easy money to post bail for a buddy in trouble with the law; a straight-arrow Police inspector, who has always enjoyed his middle income lifestyle, is suddenly desperate for money when his wife puts a down payment on a luxury flat she can’t afford and his dying father wants him to look after a young half-sister he never knew he had.

Directed by Johnnie To | Starring : Ching Wan Lau, Richie Ren, Denise Ho, Myolie Wu, Hoi-Pang Lo | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Changchun Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival

夹边沟 | The Ditch

A political ghost story that gives voice to atrocious memories, The Ditch draws equally from classical Chinese drama and Wang’s experience as a documentary filmmaker. The film’s realistic style perfectly balances the intensity of the subject matter. This is an exceptional work of ascetic cinematic poetry.

Directed by Bing Wang | Starring : Zhengwu Cheng, Niansong Jing, Ye Lu, Cenzi Xu, Haoyu Yang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Alès Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival

南京！南京！ | City of Life and Death

Nanjing, 1937. The third film from award-winning Sixth Generation director Lu Chuan, City of Life and Death is a devastating account of the massacre that occurred during the Sino-Japanese War when Japanese troops took the city of Nanjing in December 1937, a tragedy remembered as the Rape of Nanking. Shot completely in black and white, this powerful war drama unflinchingly captures the shocking violence and brutality of the Nanjing massacre, from the mass executions of POWs to the raping and slaughtering of civilians, while providing a deeply human portrait of both the victims and the perpetrators. Rendered in many shades of gray, City of Life and Death touches on the different people whose lives are destroyed by the war: the Chinese soldiers who gave their lives, the foreign missionaries who sheltered refugees, the comfort women, the Chinese civilians, and the Japanese soldiers. In a surprising move for a Mainland Chinese film about the Rape of Nanking, City of Life and Death is told primarily from the perspective of a Japanese soldier, who witnesses, commits, and abhors the atrocities of his army. By choosing to humanize rather than demonize, Lu Chuan offers an all the more devastating memory of the Nanjing massacre, and the people who lived and died in the City of Life and Death.

Directed by Chuan Lu | Starring : Ye Liu, Yuanyuan Gao, Hideo Nakaizumi, Wei Fan, Lan Qin | Presented at Edinburgh Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Athens Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Hamptons Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, London Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival

地下的天空 | The Shaft

In a mining town in western China, separately, we follow three members of a family. Each individual family members’ story flows from one to another chronologically, although they do not simply trace the continual development of a single family. There is the daughter who has to choose between her dreams and a suitable husband, the son who is about to start work down the mine, and the father who has just retired. Their lives are inextricably bound together as they symbolically represent the men and women from all mining towns who must accept their thwarted dreams and aspirations, and learn to accept their lot in life.

Directed by Chi Zhang | Starring : Deyuan Luo, Xuan Huang, Luoqian Zheng, Chen Li, Qiya Gong | Presented at Edinburgh Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Hamburg Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Marrakech Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival

今天的鱼怎么样？ | How Is Your Fish Today?

How Is Your Fish Today? tells the story of a famous screenwriter whose film scripts have all been rejected by Chinese censors. He writes a script about a man named Lin Hao for his producer, who expects it to be a Chinese version of The Fugitive. Upon reading Rao’s arthouse script, the producer rejects it as the worst screenplay he has ever read. Rao is infuriated with the response and kills Lin’s wife. Lin finds out while cheating on his wife and immediately sends Rao a thank you note. Rao is upset that Lin did not get adequately infuriated and kills all of Lin’s dogs. Lin then calls in three Nazis he knew from back in the day to poop all over Rao’s lawn. Rao is discouraged and now sees his mistake. However, Rao does not abandon his story, instead he rewrites it. Rao begins to live through his main character, Lin Hao, as he writes about him fleeing his home on a journey of self-discovery. Hao makes his way to Mohe, as does Rao, and the writer enters his own narrative. Both characters, in a struggle for freedom, have left their homes behind, but while Lin Hao is running away, Hui Rao is searching for something.

Directed by Xiaolu Guo | Starring : Xiaolu Guo, Ning Hao, Hui Rao, Zijiang Yang | Presented at Edinburgh Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, New Zealand Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Vienna 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

红颜 | Dam Street

A young woman’s indiscretion causes tremendous sufffering for her family. When, years later, she is still ostracized in the small, riverside town in China where her family lives, she resigns herself to singing with a shabby song-and-dance troupe. Her family relationships are strained and her personal life is in disarray when the young woman forms a friendship with a fiercely protective ten-year-old boy who lives across the dam. As her prospects for the future finally begin to improve, her relationship with the boy is tested, and she must come to terms with her unresolved past.

Directed by Yu Li | Starring : Yi Liu, Xingrao Huang, Kechun Li, Yizhi Wang, Li Fang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, St. Louis Film Festival

一个陌生女人的来信 | Letter from an Unknown Woman

A man rides home through a war-ridden city. A letter waits for him at home. It’s a letter written by a woman before her death. In it, she tells him that she loves him, a lifelong passion that hasn’t lessened with time, but of which he knew nothing. She recounts their short but passionate young love – to him, simply one more brief romance among many; the difficulties she had in raising their child; and their final meeting, at which he didn’t recognize her. Now that she has lost her son (the only thread linking her to the man she loved), she no longer has the strength to live on… Shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.

Directed by Jinglei Xu | Starring : Jinglei Xu, Wen Jiang, Feihu Sun, Xiaoming Su, Jue Huang | Presented at San Sebastian Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival

饺子 | Dumplings

No woman can resist the temptation of potential rejuvenation – for some it’s a dreamy blissful chase; for others a never-ending nightmare of endless pursuit. But Qing can afford it all. An ex-starlet turned wife of a prominent rich man, Qing is destined to have this dream come true. Qing uses a lot of connections to get to the mysterious chef, Mei to obtain her famous specialty dumplings. Qing is no gourmet but simply dying to recover her youth and beauty. At stake is her new “career” as a housewife of the rich. Mei’s dumplings claim to deliver the goods. Mei, a former gynecologist, developed a secret recipe for rejuvenation which has allowed her to bid farewell to her career as an abortionist. Now Mei only serves desperate rich women like Qing. Mei understands a woman’s need and she can fulfill a woman’s desire, all you need is a leap of faith to take a bite into her special dumplings with usual fillings.

Directed by Fruit Chan | Starring : Miriam Yeung Chin Wah, Bai Ling, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Miki Yeung, So-Fun Wong | Presented at Melbourne Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival

盲井 | Blind Shaft

Two Chinese coal miners have hit upon the perfect scam: murder one of their fellow mine workers, make the death look like an accident, and extort money from the boss to keep the incident hushed up. For their latest “mark,” they choose a naive teenager from a small village, and as they prepare to carry out their newest plan, things start to get complicated…

Directed by Yang Li | Starring : Qiang Li, Baoqiang Wang, Shuangbao Wang, Jing An, Zhenjiang Bao | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Moscow Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Febio Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, Cairo Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival

你那边几点 | What Time Is It Over There?

From acclaimed director Tsai Ming-Liang comes the quirky story of Hsiao Kang who sell watches in the street of Taipei for a living. A few Days after his father’s Death, he meet Shiang-Chyi, a young woman who leave for Paris the very next day. She persuades him to sell her his own watch, which has two dials, so that she can keep taipei time as well as local time, on her upcoming trip.Troubled y the behavior of this mother who prays constantly for the return of her late husband’s spirit, Hsiao Kang Take refuge in the memory of his brief encounter with Shiang-Chyi, In an effort to bridge the miles between them, he run around setting all the watches and clock in Taipei to Paris time. Meanwhile, in Paris, Shiang-Chyi confronts events that seem to be mysteriously connected with Hsiao Kang.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Cecilia Yip | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Jerusalem Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

花样年华 | In the Mood for Love

Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are polite and formal—until a discovery about their respective spouses sparks an intimate bond. At once delicately mannered and visually stunning, Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments in time.

Directed by Kar Wai Wong | Starring : Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ping Lam Siu, Tung Cho ‘Joe’ Cheung, Rebecca Pan | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Reykjavik Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

河流 | The River

Hsiao-kang shares an apartment in Taipei with his parents, but the three of them lead very separate lives. His mother works as an elevator attendant in a restaurant and is having an affair with a man who pirates porno vidotapes. Hsiao-kang is drifting through life without a job, while his father, a pensioner, pursues a solitary quest for illicit pleasures in the city’s gay saunas. As an extra in a film, Hsiao-kang plays a body adrift in the heavily polluted Tamsui River. He begins to suffer a terrible pain in his neck, but no one seems to able to cure him. In desperation, Hsiao-kang travels with his father to Taichung, to visit a faith healer. While waiting to see him, the father gets bored and decides to visit a local men’s sauna. Coincidentally, Hsiao-kang has the same idea… Life is like a river: there will always be some dark, deep, damp corners.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Chao-jung Chen, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

黄土地 | Yellow Earth

A first feature by the 32-year-old Chen Kaige, Yellow Earth is the breakthrough film that the Chinese cinema has been needing for many, many years. It is set in the arid hills of Northern Shaanxi in 1939. A soldier arrives in a mountain village and is billeted with a poor widower and his daughter and son; the soldier has been sent from the Communist base at Yan’an to collect local songs as examples of peasant culture. He is disturbed and baffled by much of what he finds in the village and when he learns that the widower’s 12-year-old daughter is to be forced into a marriage, he realizes helplessly that he is a powerless to intervene…. The film’s political candor matches its aesthetic daring. The images, exquisitely composed, derive from the traditions of Shaanxi peasant painting and Chen uses them as the basis for a film “language” unlike anything else in contemporary cinema. The summit of his achievement is that he makes his new language sing.

Directed by Kaige Chen | Starring : Xueqi Wang, Bai Xue, Quiang Liu, Tuo Tan | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival