一代宗师 | The Grandmaster

With martial arts getting more popular in the Thirties, more people seek to learn them via the professionals at Foshan in Southern China. Some of the experienced masters like to challenge their counterparts and undergoing battles. To have their whole concentration, it is their practice to lock up the venues and no one is allowed to leave during battles. No food and no rest before reaching any results. Ip Man is a young rich man extremely talented in martial arts, but he chooses to keep a low profile. Yet this doesn’t keep him out of these troubles ahead. One day he is trapped in this battleground so he has to use every means in order to get out of there. The masters are amazed by his abilities. Master Kung and his daughter Kung Yi are amongst, and the latter is attracted to this newcomer. A high warlord is assassinated by his own guard Yi Xian Tian. All masters in Foshan vow to take Tian down no matter what.

Directed by Kar Wai Wong | Starring : Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ziyi Zhang, Chen Chang, Benshan Zhao, Hye-kyo Song | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

白鹿原 | White Deer Plain

Wang Quan’an’s epic takes place towards the end of imperial China in a period of dramatic political and social upheaval. The film is set in the eponymous White Deer Village in Shaanxi Province where the two most important families – Bai and Lu – and their sons have always lived together in peace. But the turmoil leads to a fierce struggle for land ownership. A young woman new to the village soon finds herself caught between the two camps. Director Wang Quan’an uses the story of these two families as a metaphor for the fate of the Chinese people as first Chinese war lords are overrun by Japanese invaders, then civil war follows hot on the heels of the Second World War and finally the victorious Maoists begin waving their red flags. White Deer Plain is an adaptation of an historical novel of the same name by Chen Zhongshi which was blacklisted for many years on account of its explicit sex scenes. As in his earlier works Tuya’s Marriage and Apart Together, Wang Quan’an’s new work focuses once again on the fortunes of a female protagonist. Using her beauty as a way of gaining influence and a means of survival, the heroine of his latest film nonetheless manages to remain true to herself and those she loves.

Directed by Quan’an Wang | Starring : Fengyi Zhang, Kitty Zhang Yuqi, Gang Wu, Wei Liu, Taisheng Chen | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Montréal Film Festival

寒假 | Winter Vacation

An ordinary village in Northern China, the last day of the winter vacation. Four idle, aimless adolescents gather at Zhou Zhixin’s home, a friend who lives with his father, brother and nephew. Like most contemporary teenagers, these youths want to enjoy their last day of holiday and simply hang out in this place where nothing ever seems likely to happen. Their conversations are desultory and they sometimes seem to argue for argument’s sake. One of them, Laowu, talks frankly with his girlfriend about how teenage love might affect their studies, while Laobao questions school’s value and relevance to real life.

Directed by Hongqi Li | Starring : Jinfeng Bai, Lei Bao, Hui Wang, Ying Xie, Naqi Zhang | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, San Sebastian 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

迷城 | Distant Thunder

Zhao Po, a poor university student, had a crush on Yin Qi, a beautiful and smart university girl from a rich family. Zhao Po dared not to express himself for discrepancies in status. Later, he accidently got to know Gan Xiu, a girl working in hair salon. They gradually feel the love for each other. Soon, during an outing organized by people from the same hometown, Zhao Po witnessed that Gan Xiu was insulted and mysteriously disappeared.

Directed by Jiarui Zhang | Starring : Siyan Huo, Guo Xiaoran, Ge Siran, Zhigang Zhao, Yinuo Tang | Presented at Hong Kong Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival

岁月神偷 | Echoes of the Rainbow

Told through the eyes of sticky-fingered eight-year-old boy Big Ears, Echoes of the Rainbow takes place in a close-knit grassroots community in 1960s Hong Kong. Big Ears’ mother and father run the neighborhood shoe store, and his older brother Desmond  is every family’s dream son – an outstanding athlete with grades worthy of Hong Kong’s best school. Their lives aren’t always happy, but the family sticks together through all the rough times, no matter how bad it gets.

Directed by Alex Law | Starring : Simon Yam, Sandra Ng Kwan Yue, Buzz Chung, Aarif Rahman, Paul Chun | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Changchun Film Festival

如梦 | Like a Dream

A Chinese man living in New York suffers recurring dreams in which he meets an elusive, sorrowful woman. While on business in Shanghai he sees her in a photograph and goes in search of her – but instead finds her doppelgänger, a loud, exuberant factory worker. As they grow close, Max struggles to accept the compromised reality of his dream woman. In this cross-continental romance, Hong Kong–Australian director Clara Law returns to the themes of cultural displacement and identity that often permeate her films. Features an original score by Australian pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky.

Directed by Clara Law | Starring : Daniel Wu, Quan Yuan, A. Kyo Moon | Presented at Hong Kong Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival

透析 | Judge

In a small northern Chinese city in 1997, Judge Tian privately struggles with the loss of his daughter, killed by a stolen car in a hit-and-run accident. On the bench he encounters Qiuwu, a mechanic accused of stealing two cars. Perhaps influenced by his emotional state, the outwardly impassive judge imposes an almost-obsolete criminal law on Qiuwu that sentences him to death for his crime. Desperate to mitigate his sentence, Qiuwu agrees to donate his kidney to a rich businessman dying of a terminal illness, hoping at the very least that his impoverished family may profit from his demise.

Directed by Jie Liu | Starring : Dahong Ni, Ting Mei, Liang Qi, Zheng Zheng, Yingchun Song | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Miami Film Festival

中国姑娘 | She, a Chinese

Mei, a young Chinese girl bored with life in her little village, decides to quit for the nearest town, Chongqing. But life there isn’t much easier either; sacked from a clothing factory shortly after starting work, she makes do with a job in a hairdressing salon. There she meets and falls for Spikey, a local mafia’s contract killer. For this brute of a man – who has no qualms about asking her to beat him in the street with a nunchaku – she seems simply another notch on the bedpost. One evening, he comes home covered in blood and dies at her feet. Mei discovers several bundles of banknotes under his mattress, and sets off for London where she has an opportunity to marry Mister Hunt, a man of seventy. In her new husband’s silent home, a new life begins. Will she be satisfied with this monotonous routine? Paced to an original soundtrack by John Parish – working with PJ Harvey and the band Eels – and chaptered in telling titles such as Sometimes you wonder who you really are and Mei feels love under the Big Ben calendar, Xiaolu Guo has made a film in which the challenges Mei must confront do not deter her quest for a more promising future. The filmmaker uses elements of nature – stifling summer heat, a duck bleeding to death, a dog wolfed down by a fox –to express her protagonist’s feelings. Through this journey and the people Mei meets, She, a Chinese conjures the mix of cultures in the early 21st century and how people, lifestyles, consumer goods, and music all cross borders. Although these cross-cultural currents bring about a degree of chaos in Mei’s life, she finds the will to escape isolation, and to follow her desires, come what may.

Directed by Xiaolu Guo | Starring : Lu Huang, Wei Yi Bo, Geoffrey Hutchings, Chris Ryman, Hsinyi Liu | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Hamburg Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, London Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival

天水围的夜与雾 | Night and Fog

Ann Hui’s darkly realistic Night and Fog starts at the end of the story: a man murders his wife and, based on statements by unreliable witnesses, the film goes on to investigate how things could have got this far and what kind of man was able to kill his family; questions that almost inevitably remain unanswered. Night and Fog, named after Nuit et brouillard (1955), Alain Resnais’ documentary about concentration camps, looks at the difficult problem of domestic violence. An elderly man from Hong Kong takes a wife from outside the city and goes on to neglect and abuse the woman. Ann Hui’s cool registering camera is juxtaposed with flashbacks within flashbacks and dream sequences, just as in her earlier film, Song of the Exile.

Directed by Ann Hui | Starring : Jingchu Zhang, Simon Yam, Wai Keung Law, Amy Chum, Kenneth Cheung | Presented at Hong Kong Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Transilvania Film Festival

二冬 | Er Dong

A rebellious teenager endures boarding school expulsion, family pressures and the harsh realities of rural life in northern China, until an uncovered secret from his past changes his life forever. Er Dong lives alone with his devout Christian mother in a small village. Frustrated with his bad behavior, his mother takes him to a Christian school with the hope that he will find God as well as a new direction in life. Instead, he finds a girlfriend, Chang’e, and their misconduct leads to their expulsion. Together they must face up to the harsh realities of work, parenthood and adult life in the tough economic reality of contemporary China. Recurring nightmares that plague Er Dong lead him to a shocking revelation of his own past. Yang Jin’s second feature is a detail-rich, documentary-style portrait that builds with clear-eyed assurance through the life of a seemingly unheroic and unremarkable country boy. It’s not until the film looks backwards that one gains the full scope of Er Dong’s strangely epic journey. Quietly moving and full of authentic insight into the prospects for youth in rural China, Er Dong announces the arrival of a major new talent in filmmaker Yang Jin.

Directed by Jin Yang | Starring : Li Jun Bai, Ming Juan Yang, Carolan Guan, Xiao Ke Guan | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Ghent 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

一个好爸爸 | Run Papa Run

Run Papa Run is a bit of a different take on the usual Hong Kong gangster movie shenanigans. In the film, Louis Koo plays Lee, a young man who finds father figures in the Triads his mother takes care of in her underground clinic. Despite his mother’s objections, Lee joins the local gang, and soon becomes one of the most powerful gangsters in Hong Kong. However, things are turned upside down for Lee soon after her meets a pretty lawyer named Mabel. After getting Mabel pregnant and marrying her in a shotgun wedding, Lee finds himself wanting to be a “good” Triad for the sake of his daughter, Heiyi. Of course, it isn’t so easy for a hardened gangster to be a nice guy, and Lee must try to balance the needs of both of his “families”.

Directed by Sylvia Chang | Starring : Louis Koo, Rene Liu, Nora Miao, Siu Chung Mok, Suet Lam | Presented at Hong Kong Film Festival

漂浪青春 | Drifting Flowers

The eponymous drifting flowers in Zero Chou’s film are three Taiwanese women living in different parts of the island state: a child, a young girl and an old woman. All of them are seeking their true identity in the river of life and their stories are artistically interwoven in a poetic narrative. As time ebbs and flows, as love comes and goes, their journey towards finding themselves never ends.First, eight-year-old Meigo discovers the bitter taste of first love when she accidentally sees her blind sister Jing kissing Chalkie, the tomboyish accordion player in their band. The little girl’s jealousy is so strong that the three are torn apart. In another time and another place, Lily struggles with her Alzheimer’s and her fragile memory of her youth. When her old friend Yen pays her a visit he brings an additional tragedy – afflicted with Aids, he has lost the will to live. And yet, between Lily’s hallucinations and Yen’s malaise, the two form an unexpected bond and rediscover the meaning of love and life. Finally, there is Chalkie, years before she left her hometown and joined the band. Back then, when she was still at school, the confused teenager bound up her growing breasts, despite her traditional family calling her a “boy-girl”. But then, an impromptu performance changes her life.

Directed by Zero Chou | Starring : Yi-Ching Lu, Serena Fang, Chao Yi-lan, Lai-Man Chui, Chih-Ying Pai | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong 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

明明 | Ming Ming

Ming Ming is a 21st Century martial arts princess and lady Robin Hood who steals for love. Her Prince Charming is D, a maverick fighter and irresistible rogue who posted this challenge to his swarms of female admirers – give him 5 million dollars and he’ll run away with his benefactress to Harbin. Ming Ming meets D’s another girlfriend Nana, who is a virtual look-alike of Ming Ming. Meanwhile, disappears from Shanghai without a trace. The only clue he leaves behind is a cryptic phone message.

Directed by Susie Au | Starring : Xun Zhou, Daniel Wu, Tony Yang, Kristy Yang, Bo-yuan Chan | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

吴清源 | The Go Master

The latest film from celebrated Fifth Generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang, The Go Master shines a light on the life and times of Wu Qingyuan. Better know by his Japanese name Go Seigen, Wu is considered the greatest Go player of the 20th century, his talents bringing him from his native China to a professional career in Japan when he was only a teenager. Based on Wu’s autobiography, this elegantly shot and remarkably restrained biopic follows the life of a singular figure, fascinating not only for his genius and achievements in the game of Go, but also for his unique experiences as a Chinese man in Japan during an immensely turbulent period in history. With the breakout of the Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s, Wu Qingyuan and his family are thrown into an uncomfortable and dangerous position as Chinese nationals residing in Japan. While Wu’s family returns to China, he chooses to stay behind in his adopted country to continue to pursue the game of Go. In the quiet recluse of his school, there are no politics, only the singular dedication to his art and the love for his wife Kazuko. However, the chaos of the times eventually forces him out of his enclave, throwing his life and mind into conflict. Wu joins a cult in a sober pursuit of faith and his own ongoing battle to come to terms with himself.

Directed by Zhuangzhuang Tian | Starring : Chen Chang, Sylvia Chang, Xuejian Li, Ayumi Ito, Yi Huang | Presented at New York Film Festival, Rome Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Ankara Film Festival, Shanghai Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival

图雅的婚事 | Tuya’s Marriage

Living conditions are deteriorating for those who lead a rural existence in north-western Mongolia. China’s industry is expanding – even into this inhospitable region – and the government is pressurising Monoglian shepherds to give up their nomadic way of life, move to the nearby towns and settle down as farmers. Beautiful and self-confident Tuya refuses to leave her pastureland. She’d rather stay here with her disabled husband, two children and one hundred sheep, and continue to pursue a life of privation in the endless expanse of the steppe. But all the hard work begins to take its toll on Tuya. Her husband Bater tries to convince her to divorce him, but Tuya refuses to comply even with his wishes. One day, she falls ill and for the first time begins to consider a divorce, because this would enable her to find someone to help her to look after Bater, the two children and their one hundred sheep. However, none of her suitors are prepared to take on Bater – until Tuya’s old classmate Baolier arrives on the scene. Having found a very nice nursing home for Bater, he persuades Tuya and the children to move to town. But, far away from the steppe and separated from his family, Bater finds it impossible to get used to life at the home. In desperation he slashes his wrists. When the news reaches Tuya, she realises that the time has come for her to act …

Directed by Quan’an Wang | Starring : Nan Yu, Ba’toer, Sen’ge, Zhaya, Bao’lier | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, London Film Festival, Portland Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Maui Film Festival

黑眼圈 | I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone

Forest fires burn in Sumatra; a smoke covers Kuala Lumpur. Grifters beat an immigrant day laborer and leave him on the streets. Rawang, a young man, finds him, carries him home, cares for him, and sleeps next to him. In a loft above lives a waitress. She sometimes provides care and attention. More violence seems a constant possibility. They find another man abandoned on the street, paralyzed. They carry him. While no one speaks to each other, sounds dominate: coughing, cooking, coupling, opening bags; music and news reports on a radio, the rattle and buzz of a restaurant. It’s dark in the city at night. We see down hallways, through doors, down alleys. Who sleeps with whom?

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Norman Atun, Pearlly Chu, Azman Hassan | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival

浮生 | Bliss

This is a story about a family living beside a river. Like all the other families, every member of the family seems close to each other. But in fact they are miles apart, and everyone has a secret that they cannot share. The retried policeman Lao Li and his family members with is or her own character all want to have a special life for themselves. They get together in this family and create their own stories. Water in the river is flowing day and night, and life is just like a river. You can only move on without stopping. Never themes, it seems that people in the story are getting something in their hearts at a particular moment. Is that Joy? Or is that sorrow?

Directed by Zhimin Sheng | Starring : Zhong Liao, Lan Wang, Tao Xu, Xing-quan He, Jiang-ge Guan | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Indianapolis Film Festival, Shanghai 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

伊莎贝拉 | Isabella

On the eve of Macau’s handover to China, police officer Shing is having the worst time of his life. Suspended for suspected corruption, he tries to find solace with an elfin creature by the name of Yan, whom he just picks up. As he tries to smooth-talk her to bed, she suddenly snaps back with the biggest turn-off imaginable: that she is the daughter he never knew existed!While Shing desperately tries to hold himself together, his bachelor life inevitably falls apart as Yan insists on living under his roof. Together the two of them start roaming through exotic Macau, tracking down Yan’s missing puppy and striving to acquaint with each other. No sooner has Shing grown into his new role as a father than he finds his hands full: when Yan is not fighting with his girlfriend Kate, she is being bothered by her dorky classmate Fai.

Directed by Ho-Cheung Pang | Starring : Isabella Leong, Chapman To, Josie Ho, Kwok Cheung Tsang, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Fantasia 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

看上去很美 | Little Red Flowers

Qiang is a four-year-old little rebel, possessed of a pair of luminous eyes and a precociously indomitable will. His father deposits him at a well-appointed residential kindergarten in post-1949 Beijing, since his parents are often away. Life at the kindergarten appears rich and colourful, made up of a variety of cheerfully sunny rituals and games meant to train these children to be good members of society. But it’s not so easy for Qiang to adapt to this kind of carefully organized, minutely scrutinized collective life. A fierce individualist in miniature, he tries but fails to conform to the model his teachers enforce. Yet he still craves the reward that the other students win: the little red flowers awarded each day as tokens for good behaviour. But Qiang doesn’t win any flowers: he can’t yet dress himself, and doesn’t play together with the other kids. He even dares to talk back to the strict Teacher Li and Principal Kong when they try to impose some discipline on him. Gradually, his charisma and bravado start to win over his classmates: their stealthy little rebellions gain steam when he succeeds in convincing everyone that Teacher Li is a child-eating monster in disguise. When their attempt to capture her is thwarted, Qiang’s resistance develops a more disturbing dimension, and he is forcibly ostracized from his companions. Will he succumb to the adult-enforced conformity around him, or will he insist on growing up his own way, by his own rules?

Directed by Yuan Zhang | Starring : Bowen Dong, Yuanyuan Ning, Zhao Rui, Xiaofeng Li, Chen Manyuan | Presented at Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Marrakech Film Festival, Espoo Film Festival

结果 | Before Born

Before Born is a surreal mystery about modern Chinese life that has garnered comparisons to L’avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic 1960 film. The film tells the story of a private detective, Huang Guangliang, hired to gather evidence of an affair by a man named Li Chonggao. When he arrives in the coastal city of Beihai in search of his target, he discovers that he has disappeared and instead meets an enigmatic young woman who is also looking for Li.

Directed by Ming Zhang | Starring : Li Huang Zhong Liao, Kwong Leung Wong, Baihui Xu, Xiaxi Huang | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

赖小子 | Walking on the Wild Side

Han Jie’s feature debut draws on his own experiences growing up in a desolate mining district in northern China’s Shanxi province. A Chinese road movie, Walking on the Wild Side charts a young gang’s continuous flights from one kind of trouble to the next. Mirroring the stark and barren landscape, the film relays the grim story of these delinquents’ dreams of liberty and easy money. Played by nonprofessional actors who are real life troublemakers, the film offers a realism that is at once oppressive, cruel, and sympathetic.

Directed by Jie Han | Starring : Paijiang Bai, Qiang Guo, Jing Hou, Jie Lu, Zhaoting Tian | Presented at Rotterdam Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, La Rochelle Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival, Locarno 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

向日葵 | Sunflower

The tumultuous relationship between a father returning home after years in a labor camp and the nine-year-old son who doesn’t quite know what to make of this new man in his life lies at the heart of director Zhang Yang’s heartfelt drama addressing the nature of change and the importance of family in Chinese culture. Chairman Mao has died and the Gang of Four have fallen, leaving former painter Gengnian to return home to his wife, Xiuqing, and the pair’s nine-year-old son Xiangyang. His hands permanently damaged by the ravages of hard labor, Gengnian cannot return to painting, though his young son has shown an abundance of artistic promise. Troubled by the sudden presence of a father he has never known and rebelling against the path laid before him, Xiangyang ignites a firecracker in his hand in hopes that it may derail his artistic career. In the years that follow, Xiangyang’s reputation as a talented artist grows while his relationship with his father remains forever troubled.

Directed by Yang Zhang | Starring : Joan Chen, Haiying Sun, Zhang Fan, Zifeng Liu, Jing Liang | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival

无穷动 | Perpetual Motion

Four mature and successful women, epitomizing today’s Chinese high society, meet on the Spring Festival’s eve in the opulent mansion of Niuniu, an established editor of fashion magazines. While the party enfolds, the four friends have the chance to open up their hearts, for the first time in their life, and to reveal the traumas deriving from a dramatic past. Political events, family tragedies, sentimental affairs, which seemed deeply buried beneath the modern facade of these successful women, mark in reality all of their lives. A film dealing with women sexuality and questioning the past generation of old revolutionaries, with a touch of black-humor in the signature style of director Ning Ying.

Directed by Ying Ning | Starring : Huang Hung, Qinqin Li, Sola Liu, Yanni Ping, Hanzhi Zhang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival

桃色 | Colour Blossoms

A visually stunning reflection on lustful desire, Yonfan’s Colour Blossoms tells the story of Meili, a realtor, who visits a mansion after being asked to sell it. There, she meets the mysterious Madame Umeki, and finds herself caught up in irresistible physical desires that transcend time and space. Geiko Matsuzaka from Japan, Teresa Chung from Hong Kong, and Ha Risoo from Korea explore a dreamy world of sex and passion.

Directed by Yonfan | Starring : Teresa Cheung, Keiko Matsuzaka, Ri-su Ha, Carl Ng, Sho Yokouchi | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival