桃姐 | A Simple Life

Based on a true story, the film centres on Ah Tao, an amah who has worked for the Leung family for four generations. She lives with and takes care of Roger, a film producer who is the only member of the Leung household still living in Hong Kong. Roger returns home one day and finds Ah Tao unconscious after a stroke. Convinced she has becoming a burden, Tao resigns and moves into a retirement home. But upon her arrival, she continues to be taken care of by Roger, who realizes just how important she is to him. He decides to do his best to watch after the person who has nurtured him all his life. But Ah Tao’s health is fast deteriorating. Hui has always excelled when telling stories of everyday life. In A Simple Life, she delivers a rich and heartwarming drama that not only deals with the many abandoned old people in Hong Kong, but also exquisitely captures the unique relationship between the amah and the family for which she cares. In an age when loyalty between employers and employees is fast disappearing, A Simple Life highlights a culture that has almost ceased to exist in Hong Kong: one in which a person devotes their life to serving a family, and in return is cherished as much as any other relative.

Directed by Ann Hui | Starring : Andy Lau, Deannie Yip, Hailu Qin, Fuli Wang, Paul Chun | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Dubai Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Okinawa Film Festival, Durban Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Portland Film Festival

Hello！树先生 | Mr. Tree

Shu, a bachelor, is an unreliable worker in his village’s motor-repair shop. He tends to stay silent, like a forgotten tree in the wilderness. When the villagers are forced to evacuate due to the expansion of the local mining activities, Shu goes to the provincial capital to ask his friend for a job in a tutorial school. There, Shu falls in love at first sight with Xiaomei, a deaf-mute girl. On the night before their wedding, Shu’s dead father, his elder brother and his elder brother’s murderer appear in his dreams. The wedding is a disaster, and Xiaomei leaves to rejoin her mother. The worries and intuitions that have long flashed through Shu’s mind start to make sense to him. He begins to make prophecies, and many of them come true.

Directed by Jie Han | Starring : Baoqiang Wang, Zhuo Tan, Jie He, Bo Liu, Jing An | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival

让子弹飞 | Let the Bullets Fly

Set during the Age of the Warlords in the 1920s, this comic western is the highest grossing Chinese film ever. When circumstances force an outlaw to impersonate a county governor and clean up a corrupt town, the Robin Hood figure finds himself in a showdown with the local “godfather”. Full of surprises and grounded with a smart, humorous script, Let the Bullets Fly’s battles are fought with guns and wit.a

Directed by Wen Jiang | Starring : Wen Jiang, Yun-Fat Chow, You Ge, Bing Shao, Fan Liao | Presented at Tribeca Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, London Film Festival

当爱来的时候 | When Love Comes

Chang Tso-Chi’s wonderful new film – his most achieved since The Best of Times – is about the members of a family. They come from Kinmen Island, a dot in the sea just off the coast of mainland China which for many years bore the brunt of China’s enmity towards Taiwan, but have settled in the Taipei suburbs to run a modest restaurant. The family has secrets which don’t come out until one member dies (without giving too much away, we can say they have to do with maternity), but there are no great melodramatic revelations. Women dominate the family; the men are a seemingly henpecked husband, nicknamed Dark Face, an autistic uncle who hates the number ‘3’ and has a real talent for ‘naïve’ drawing, and a new grandson, born in unusual circumstances in the opening scene. The women range from a bossy matriarch to a teenager struggling with the realisation that she made the wrong choice of boyfriend. Chang stirs them all together in episodes which have the authentic rhythms of family life and none of the contrivances of soap opera. He observes them with the kind of comic warmth last seen in the films of Edward Yang.

Directed by Tso-chi Chang | Starring : Yijie Li, Yushun Lin, Zihua He, Xuefeng Lu, Meng-jie Gao | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rotterdam 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

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

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

黄金周 | Routine Holiday

A father takes his son to observe an empty field, and then to visit a neighbour, who is soon visited by other reticent characters, including a man who is a little violent, and another next-door neighbour who has fallen ill. Between haunting periods of silence reminiscent of Beckett’s existential plays, the characters discuss why they are alive. Then one of them decides to slap the other in the face. The little boy, however, is less interested in the forlorn adults around him than in the strange contents of his bucket. Poet and novelist Li Hongqi’s new movie takes a voyeuristic and melancholy glimpse into the suburban lives of his characters to cast light on a quiet thread of restlessness that connects us all.

Directed by Hongqi Li | Starring : Yang Bo, Xiao He, Duo Yu | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, London 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

色，戒 | Lust, Caution

Shanghai, 1942. The World War II Japanese occupation of this Chinese city continues in force. Mrs. Mak, a woman of sophistication and means, walks into a café, places a call, and then sits and waits. She remembers how her story began several years earlier, in 1938 China. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi. With WWII underway, Wong has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min. Kuang has started a drama society to shore up patriotism. As the theater troupe’s new leading lady, Wong realizes that she has found her calling, able to move and inspire audiences and Kuang. He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee. Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yees’ trust by befriending his wife and then draw the man into an affair. Wong transforms herself utterly inside and out, and the scenario proceeds as scripted until an unexpectedly fatal twist spurs her to flee. Shanghai, 1941. With no end in sight for the occupation, Wong having emigrated from Hong Kong goes through the motions of her existence. Much to her surprise, Kuang re-enters her life. Now part of the organized resistance, he enlists her to again become Mrs. Mak in a revival of the plot to kill Yee, who as head of the collaborationist secret service has become even more a key part of the puppet government. As Wong reprises her earlier role, and is drawn ever closer to her dangerous prey, she finds her very identity being pushed to the limit…

Directed by Ang Lee | Starring : Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Wei Tang, Joan Chen, Leehom Wang, Chung-Hua Tou | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Calgary Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Edmonton Film Festival, London Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Valladolid Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Göteborg 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

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

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

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

世界 | The World

Set in World Park—a Beijing theme park featuring replicas of 106 must-see sites from 14 countries—The World is a deeply-affecting story of love, spectacle and social injustice set against a backdrop of intensifying globalisation. Here the pretty young dancer Tao lives out her dreams, performing hourly for the amusement of the tourists. Behind the glittering costumes the dancers’ lives are a finely-tuned choreography of changing personal relationships. Amid the opportunities of a rapidly-urbanising ‘new China’ where assurance is only a text-message away, hopes and dreams flourish. But disappointment stalks, and Tao realises the isolated theme park is not immune to the harsh realities of life. One of the most important films by the leading director of the China’s Sixth Generation, The World is Jia’s first film to have offical sanction from the Chinese Government.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Taisheng Chen, Hongwei Wang, Sanming Han, Jing Dong Liang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Las Palmas Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Reykjavik Film Festival, Sao Paulo 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

恋爱中的宝贝 | Baober in Love

Liu Zhi, a young man living a depressed life from his marriage with a dominating girl, met Baober (an ageless young girl) on Beijing street one day. They fell in love and started to live a strange, mysterious life…

Directed by Shaohong Li | Starring : Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Jue Huang, Fan Liao, Gang Wang | Presented at Telluride Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

制服 | Uniform

Economic unrest roils central China’s Shaanxi Province: local factories are merging, thugs threaten managers, personnel records get lost, and workers are without protections such as health insurance. The police and much of society are surly. Xiao Jian, a mild young man whose father is ill, works in the family street stall doing pressing and tailoring. A laundered police-officer’s shirt goes uncollected, and Xiao Jian puts it on: it opens doors. Wearing it, he chats up a clerk, Zheng Shasha, and takes her out. He extracts fines from drivers who violate traffic laws. In these tough times, he’s not the only one with two identities.

Directed by Yi’nan Diao | Starring : Kai Han, Hongli Liang, Hua Qin, Xueqiong Zeng | Presented at Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival, London Film Festival

不散 | Goodbye Dragon Inn

A Japanese tourist takes refuge from a rainstorm inside a once-popular movie theater, a decrepit old barn of a cinema that is screening a martial arts classic, King Hu’s 1966 “Dragon Inn.” Even with the rain bucketing down outside, it doesn’t pull much of an audience – and some of those who have turned up are less interested in the movie than in the possibility of meeting a stranger in the dark.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Kiyonobu Mitamura, Tien Miao, Chao-jung Chen | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, London Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Febio Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, La Rochelle Film Festival, Maine Film Festival

昨天 | Quitting

Quitting concerns a troubled soul and how the massive changes wrought in contemporary urban China can batter a man. But the protagonist is not a hapless naif, fearing and defeated by change. Both the star of the film and the person on which it is based is Jia Hong-Sheng, one of China’s most visible young stars, whose performances in Suzhou River and Frozen practically define the bursting exuberance of young Chinese cinema. Both historical biography and documentary re-enactment, Quitting defies easy categorization, with the real protagonists of Jia’s hellish life journey playing themselves in almost every case.

Directed by Yang Zhang | Starring : Hongshen Jia, Fengsen Jia, Xiuling Chai, Tong Wang, Shun Xing | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival

千禧曼波 | Millennium Mambo

From one of the world’s greatest living directors and critically acclaimed as his finest film, Millennium Mambo is as stylish, hypnotic and mesmerizing as Wong Kar- Wai’s hit film, In the Mood for Live, which it clearly resembles in its evocative portrayal of an intense relationship and in its stylish direction powered by a thumping electric soundtrack. Winner of the Grand Prix Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Millennium Mambo is a strikingly beautiful film set in Taipei’s hot nightclub scene. The remarkable Shu Qi stars as Vicky, a lost soul who hangs out partying with her friends, smoking nonstop, and dancing and flirting. The youthful Vicky is torn between two men, Hao-Hao and Jack. She lives with Hao-Hao (Tuan Chun-hao), but he doesn’t seem to excite her anymore, so she starts seeing an older gangster, Jack (Jack Kao), although the depth of the relationship is left purposely ambiguous. Some degree of affinity between them begins to take shape: it may lead to a still closer relationship or a permanent friendship. Although Vicky wants to be a free spirit, she is battling demons that cast dark shadows over her somewhat meaningless existence. One of the world’s greatest filmmakers, Hou Hsiao-Hsien has made an innovative and daring film that is nothing short of mesmerising.

Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou | Starring : Qi Shu, Jack Kao, Doze Niu, Chun-hao Tuan, Pauline Chan | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Flanders Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, London Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival

蓝宇 | Lan Yu

Beijing, 1988. On the cusp of middle-age, Chen Handong has known little but success all his life. The eldest son of a senior government bureaucrat, he heads a fast-growing trading company and plays as hard as he works. His loyal lieutenant Liu Zheng is one of the few who know that Handong¿s tastes run to boys more than girls. Lan Yu is a country boy, newly arrived in Beijing to study architecture. More than most students, he is short of money and willing to try anything to earn some. He has run into Liu Zheng, who pragmatically suggests that he could prostitute himself for one night to a gay pool-hall and bar owner. But Handong happens to be in the pool-hall that evening, and he nixes the deal. He takes Lan Yu home himself, and gives the young man what turns out to be a life-changing sexual initiation.

Directed by Stanley Kwan | Starring : Ye Liu, Jun Hu, Jin Su, Yongning Zhang, Shuang Li | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

命带追逐 | Mirror Image

Pawnshop manager Lin Tung-Ching’s life has become too unpredictable since the lifeline of his left hand was damaged in a motorcycle accident. His girlfriend Eiko is desperate to find a way to help Tung-Ching retrieve his lifeline. She suggests they take customers palm prints, so she can practice her palm-reading. Even though Eiko is helping him, Lin feels attracted to a another girl, one who came to collect her pawned watch. He manages to meet her without Eiko knowing.

Directed by Ya-chuan Hsiao | Starring : Hsiao-fan Fan, Jiunn-jye Lee, Era Wang, Dei-yuan Chu, Li-wei Yang | Presented at Hong Kong Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Marrakech Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Jeonju Film Festival

榴莲飘飘 | Durian Durian

Durian Durian is an extension of the life of Fan, the illegal immigrant girl in Little Cheung. Fan strikes up a friendship with fellow immigrant Yan, the hardest working prostitute in town who must endure the harsh conditions of her job on one side of the border (HK) while she tries to turn her profits into a success on the other side of the border (China). One day, the pimp accompanying her gets his head smashed from behind in a random act of violence. The weapon is a strange, spiky fruit known as the “durian”. The idealistic and naive views of Hong Kong that the girls share are destroyed by differences in culture, isolated existences, and limited choices.

Directed by Fruit Chan | Starring : Hailu Qin, Wai-Fan Mak, Suet-man Mak, Xiao Ming Biao, Wai Yiu Yung | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, Cinemanila 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

卧虎藏龙 | Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

The fate of two women, both capable fighters, intertwine during the Ching Dynasty. One of them tries passionately to break free from the constraint society has placed upon her, even if it means giving up her aristocratic privileges for a life of crime and passion. The other, in her lifelong pursuit of justice and honor, only too late discovers the consequences of unfulfilled love. Their two destinies will lead them to a violent and astonishing showdown, in which each will make a surprising, climactic choice.

Directed by Ang Lee | Starring : Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, Chen Chang, Pei-pei Cheng | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Reykjavik Film Festival, London Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Flanders Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Istanbul 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

细路祥 | Little Cheung

A nine-year old boy confronts the heady complexities of the adult world, its violence, guilt and loss, with comic and tragic consequences. After school, Little Cheung helps out in his father’s restaurant, working in the kitchen and delivering food to neighbourhood gambling dens, funeral parlours and brothels. He is cute, well-liked, always handsomely tipped. Little Cheung’s father hides a warm heart beneath a cold, hard shell. His mother looks after business, whilst his house-bound grandmother, silent but loving, nurses a secret sorrow. His older brother was lost to the gangland underworld years ago. Little Cheung befriends Fan, a street-smart girl his age and together they run a strange delivery business with the local mafia. Cheung splits the commission with her and steals cakes from his father’s restaurant. He is brutally punished by his father and runs away on his grandmother’s birthday. Fan reveals his hiding place, then disappears. Uneasily reunited with his family, from the balcony where Grandma always sat, he sees Fan in the street. Little Cheung runs to greet her, but their reunion is short-lived. Fan and her family are arrested and hauled into a police van. Illegal immigrants, they will be deported to Mainland China. Little Cheung is alone.

Directed by Fruit Chan | Starring : Yuet-Ming Yiu, Wai-Fan Mak, Yuet-Man Mak, Robby Cheung, Gary Lai | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, London Film Festival, Gijón Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival