我十一 | 11 Flowers

One of China’s foremost Sixth Generation directors, Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams) tells a striking, autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in the final days of China’s Cultural Revolution. Eleven-year-old Wang Han lives with his family in a remote village in Guizhou province. When Wang is selected to lead his school through their daily gymnastic regiment, his teacher recommends that he wear a clean, new shirt in honor of this important position – a request that forces his family to make a great sacrifice.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Ni Yan, Jinchun Wang, Wenqing Liu, Renlang Qiao, Yi Zi | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Les Arcs Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival, St. Louis Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival

李米的猜想 | The Equation of Love and Death

When a mysterious death occurs, the lives of five unexpected strangers are suddenly intertwined together. A drug trafficking crime is unveiled, and through the twist and turns of the investigation, their stories unravel, and a bizarre connection is gradually discovered between them. The Equation of Love and Death weaves together three different love stories, examining the different emotional struggles people go through in dealing with pain and lost, and how letting go might just be the hardest thing to do.

Directed by Baoping Cao | Starring : Xun Zhou, Chao Deng, Hanyu Zhang, Baoqiang Wang, Yanhui Wang | Presented at San Sebastian Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival

爱情的牙齿 | Teeth of Love

Zhuang Yuxin’s drama Teeth of Love follows the life of Qian Yehong during three different eras. The film opens with her as a teenager who breaks the heart of a boy in love with her. The next section finds her working as a physician and carrying on a sexual relationship with a man married to a different woman. The third act finds Qian in an unfulfilling marriage.

Directed by Yuxin Zhuang | Starring : Bingyan Yan, Hongtao Li, Naiwen Li, Jia Chi, Jiaojiao Wu | Presented at Montréal Film Festival, Kerala Film Festival, Fribourg 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

背鸭子的男孩 | Taking Father Home

Traveling with no money and only two ducks as collateral, Xu Yun walks into an urban jungle of gangsters and thieves, throwing his life into danger. He earns the sympathy and support of streetwise hustler Scar and a cynical policeman. Both help Xu Yun find clues to the whereabouts of his father, but their efforts are dashed by a 24-hour flood warning forcing the sudden evacuation of the entire city. Will Xu Yun find his father in time, and if so, will he bring his father back home? Winner of several international festival awards, Taking Father Home is the debut feature of radical independent filmmaker Ying Liang, who borrowed equipment and recruited friends and family to realize his fierce vision of an emotionaly scarred society. The film presents “a side of China that is rarely, if ever, seen on film.

Directed by Liang Ying | Starring : Yun Xu, Xiaopei Liu, Jie Wang, Cijun Song | Presented at Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, London Film Festival, Cleveland Film Festival

我爱你 | I Love You

This story is based on a novel by Wang Shuo. A young couple have got together from first meet to marriage. DaoJi, she is very sensitive to her feeling and filled with aspiration to succeed and love…after honeymoon, they begin to go shopping at an agricultural market with basket as others. Jealousy, arguments are a relief of tedium in their insipid life. Conflicts, run away and frenzy are only ripples in dead pond.

Directed by Yuan Zhang | Starring : Jinglei Xu, Dawei Tong, Xuebing Wang, Peng Du, Juan Pan | Presented at Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

站台 | Platform

Platform, Jia Zhang-ke’s second feature, established Jia as a major player in world cinema, and “might be the greatest film to come out of Mainland China” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). Set in Jia’s native Fenyang in Shanxi Province, the film offers an epic social history of China in radical cultural and economic transformation from Maoism to market capitalism. This transition is charted through the trials and tribulations of a troupe of young performers who, in the years between 1979 and 1989, themselves transform from the Fenyang Peasant Cultural Group, performing rousing propaganda songs, into the All Star Rock and Breakdance Electronic Revue, playing cheesy ’80s synth pop. Jia’s narrative approach is episodic and elliptical; his visual style rigorous, distanced, and observant. “One of the richest films of the past decade …It’s Pop Art as history… Jia has a strong visual style (based on long fixed-camera ensemble takes) and a powerful set of concerns” (J. Hoberman). “Jia presents a startling precise definition of globalization” (Richard Brody).

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Hongwei Wang, Jing Dong Liang, Sanming Han, Bo Wang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, London Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival

一一 | Yi yi: A One and a Two

With the runaway international acclaim of this film, Taiwanese director Edward Yang could no longer be called Asian cinema’s best-kept secret. Yi Yi swiftly follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-aged father NJ’s tenuous flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, Yang imbues every gorgeous frame with a deft, humane clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century.

Directed by Edward Yang | Starring : Nien-Jen Wu, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Issei Ogata | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival,  Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival, Valladolid Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, London Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival

小百无禁忌 | Hidden Whisper

The film consists of three stories: One about a 5-year-old girl, one about a teenager, and still another about a 30 something woman involved in an affair with a married man. Without providing a definite answer whether the three leading actresses are playing the same person in different stages of life, the movie instead hovers on several consistent themes that keep on emerging in all the stories. For example, the image of drops of blood on the clothes, in the shape of maroon flowers.

Directed by Vivian Chang | Starring : Qi Shu, Leon Dai, Elaine Jin, Ching-ting Hsia, Shu-shen Hsiao | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

天上人间 | Love Will Tear Us Apart

Ah Ying is a provincial prostitute from mainland China. With a short-term visa, she hopes to start a new life in Hong Kong. She hooks up with other immigrants: a woman who can no longer work as a dance instructor since she lost a leg, a porn enthusiast and an introvert addicted to hookers. Entrapped in dingy brothels, cramped lifts and karaoke, these new generation nomads are united in a common struggle. But the battle between homeland attachment and their new lives will tear them apart.

Directed by Nelson Yu Lik-wai | Starring : Tony Leung Ka Fai, Liping Lü, Ning Wang, Rolf Chow | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

美丽新世界 | A Beautiful New World

Comedy. Baogen, a young man from out of town unused to city living, has won a lottery prize – a new flat in Shanghai. Unfortunately, when he arrives to claim his prize he finds that the new apartment is not nearly ready and – to make matters worse – the estate agent is doing his best to swindle him. Baogen decides to stay in the city and ends up at the home of streetwise Jinfang; an unlikely friendship thus begins to develop.

Directed by Runjiu Shi | Starring : Wu Jiang, Hong Tao, Richie Ren, Ning Chen, Wu Bai | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

愈快乐愈堕落 | Hold You Tight

Adapted from Wang Anyi’s award-winning novel, the film follows the life of a legendary Shanghai beauty, Wang Qiyao, whose fading glamour is mirrored by the prosperous growth of the city of Shanghai. The film co-stars Tony Leung Ka Fai, Hu Jun, Daniel Wu, and Huang Jue as men who fall for Wang Qiyao. Yet those she loves just leave her one after another when she grows old, and eventually she herself has to face what fate has prepared for her. The metropolitan city is perhaps the only thing that can survive all the drastic changes and remain forever young… Everlasting Regret resembles Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage thematically for both detail the rise and fall of a Shanghainese woman, but Everlasting Regret ambitiously covers a longer period from 1940s to 1980s, almost half a century. The nostalgic mood of the film reminds of Kwan’s best-known piece Rouge. Art Director William Chang, famous for creating a nostalgic atmosphere in Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love and 2046, successfully reconstructs the lifestyle of old Shanghai.

Directed by Stanley Kwan | Starring : Chingmy Yau, Sunny Chan, Eric Tsang, Lawrence Ko, Sandra Ng Kwan Yue | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

春花梦露 | A Drifting Life

After his wife dies during childbirth, Ku-cheng leaves his children behind in their rural village while he finds work on a construction site in the city. He develops a relationship with a widow but despite their intimacy, he refuses to remarry. Lin’s moving, mutli-generational debut feature is anchored by a strong performance from Tsai Ming-liang alter ego Lee Kang-sheng.

Directed by Cheng-sheng Lin | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Jing Tseng, Vicky Wei, Shufang Chen, Yu-Wen Wang | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival

民警故事 | On the Beat

Take crime out of police work, and what’s left is procedures. In the western sector of Beijing, we follow the tedium of police officers. A rabid dog is loose in Guoli’s beat: a gang of police officers hunts it down. Then, word comes from on high to pick up all the dogs in the sector: fear of rabies combines with the dogs’ being status symbols of the nouveau riche. Occasionally a criminal is picked up: someone selling porn, someone running a three-card-monte game. Cops smoke, go to meetings, and hold trainings. They patrol on bicycles and enforce edicts. Guoli works nights. He’s lazy at home, his wife wants him to do more. Is there any more to do?

Directed by Ying Ning | Starring : Li Zhanho, Liangui Wang, Zhiming Zhao, Li Jian, Shen Zhenou | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Entrevues Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

戏梦人生 | The Puppetmaster

Li Tien Lu is the world’s most famous puppet master. Born in Taïwan on the wake of World War I, he lived through the Japanese occupation, and American bombings of his country. Now eighty-four, reflects on the forces that shaped his life: “My hands breathed life into my puppet figures. I created them and directed the drama of their fates, almost as though I were God himself. But the reality is that, with someone above me pulling the strings, I, too, am a mere puppet…”

Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou | Starring : Tianlu Li, Giong Lim, Hung Liou, Chen-Nan Tsai, Lai-Yin Yang | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

血色清晨 | Bloody Morning

This film captures the depressing everyday life in a small town where everyone knows a murder will happen. Fifth-generation woman director Li Shaohong has freely adapted the García Márquez novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold to produce a truly shocking account of the consequences of poverty and backwardness in a North China village. In her version, the victim of the all-too-preventable killing is not a wealthy man but the village teacher, the only intellectual in a community of peasants. The build-up to the crime, explored in a web of flashbacks, turns out to hinge on the inner rage of a 36-year-old male virgin and on the puritanical stance of traditional village society; but what Li ultimately lays bare is the psyche of a people for whom existence means no more than survival.

Directed by Shaohong Li | Starring : Jun Zhao, Zhaohui Gong, Yajie Hu, Lu Hui, Lin Kong | Presented at Nantes Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival

盗马贼 | The Horse Thief

One of the most spectacular films to emerge from the New Chinese Cinema is Tian Zhuangzhuang’s Horse Thief. It tells the tale of Norbu, a horse stealer, who is driven out by his tribe in an effort to purge it of evil. Forced to live in harsh isolation with his family, Norbu repents after the death of his son, but he must revert to stealing after the birth of another child. Using this simple narrative, with a minimum of dialogue, Horse Thief creates a visually spectacular work. It fills the screen with gorgeous Buddhist rituals captured in great detail and the vast empty landscape of Tibet accented by a dramatic use of widescreen photography. Breathtaking and mystical, Horse Thief “has the epic sweep that suggests a western told from the Native American point of view.”

Directed by Zhuangzhuang Tian | Starring : Rigzin Tseshang, Jiji Dan, Daiba, Gaoba, Jamco Jayang | Presented at Fribourg Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival