人山人海 | People Mountain People Sea

Lao Tie knows in his heart that he must help find his younger brother’s killer, despite his own problems. He has only recently returned home penniless to the remote mountain community after years away working in the city. Although the police identified the murderer as ex-con Xiao Qiang from a neighbouring village, they were not able to stop him from escaping. Lao Tie decides to hunt down his brother’s killer. He begins a journey that will unleash his long-suppressed inner pain and rage.

Directed by Shangjun Cai | Starring : Zhenjiang Bao, Hong Tao, Jianbin Chen, Xiubo Wu, Yanming Li | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival

寻欢作乐 | The High Life

In Guangzhou, petty con artist Jian Ming scams naive country folk like Xiao Ya out of their cash and keeps a record of them on his bedroom wall. His girlfriend Fang’s relative wealth comes from being a kept woman, but she’s had just about enough of her elderly patron. Jian Ming seems to be coasting along with few moral qualms until he befriends Xiao Ya and realizes that she brightens up his dull life. Nonetheless he sets her up to be assaulted by local gangster Hui, which finally compels him into an emotional reaction.

Directed by Zhao Dayong | Starring : Shaoqiu Shen, Hong Qiu, Yanfei Liu, Qingyi Su, Lei Diao | Presented at Nantes Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, San Sebastian 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

第四张画 | The Fourth Portrait

Ten year-old Xiang faces a lonely future after his father dies. Just when he thinks he’s going to spend his life in the orphanage, his estranged mother shows up. And his life changes forever… A loveless mother, a hateful stepfather, a chilly home. Where’s Xiang heading to? He finds comfort in drawing and his work reveals his longing for care and affection. Life is full of hope again when he meets the old school janitor who doesn’t show his kindness easily and a portly man who has crazy ideas and is haunted with nightmares of his brother. A scary truth is about to be unmasked. Will Xiang be able to depict his own image in the fourth portrait?

Directed by Mong-Hong Chung | Starring : Bi Xiao-Hai, Shih-chieh Chin, Lei Hao, Leon Dai, Terri Kwan | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Gindou Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival

意外 | Accident

A self-styled “accident choreographer,” Brain is a professional hitman who kills his victims by trapping them in well crafted “accidents” that look like unfortunate mishaps but are in fact perfectly staged acts of crime. Perennially plagued with guilt, he is also suspicious and morbid by nature. The recent avalanche of memories of his lost wife does not make things any easier. After one mission accidentally goes wrong, causing the life of one of his men, Brain is convinced that this accident has been choreographed: someone is out there plotting to terminate him and his team. He becomes increasingly paranoid, walking on the thin line between reality and delusion. When he discovers that a mysterious insurance agent Fong is somewhat related one of the “accidents” he has staged, Brain becomes obsessed that this man must be the mastermind behind a conspiracy to take him out. To regain his sanity and to save his life, he must strive to kill Fong before he makes his next move.

Directed by Pou-Soi Cheang | Starring : Louis Koo, Richie Ren, Michelle Ye, Shui-Fan Fung, Suet Lam | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Athens Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Fantasia Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival

金碧辉煌 | Fujian Blue

“The whole world fears Fujian!” announces a TV pundit, commenting on the notoriety of China’s southeastern province as the country’s center for illegal emigration and human trafficking. Shot on location in Fujian’s coastal towns and on Pingtan Island in the Taiwan Strait, with a cast of non-professionals playing characters very much like themselves, Robin Weng’s pin-sharp debut feature reveals why and how so many young Chinese pay to have themselves smuggled in containers to the West.

Directed by Weng Shou Ming | Starring : Liu Haochen, Jin Luo, Chen Shu, Lin Yile, Wang Yinan | Presented at Vancouver Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival

三峡好人 | Still Life

Coalminer Han Sanming comes from Fengyang in Shanxi to the Three Gorges town Fengjie to look for his ex-wife whom he has not seen for 16 years. The couple meet on the bank of the Yangtze River and vow to remarry. Nurse Shen Hong also comes to Fengjie from Taiyuan in Shanxi to look for her husband who has not been home for two years. The couple embrace each other and waltz under the imposing Three Gorges dam, but feel they are so apart and decide to have a divorce. The old township has been submerged, while a new town has to be built. Life persists in the Three Gorges – what should be taken up is taken up, what should be cast off is cast off.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Zhou Lan, Sanming Han, Lizhen Ma, Hongwei Wang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Marrakech Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival, Durban Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, New Zealand Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Wisconsin 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

天边一朵云 | The Wayward Cloud

The most audacious film to date from visionary director Tsai Ming-liang, The Wayward Cloud is about a porn actor and the museum tour guide who enters into a strange relationship with him, unaware of his profession. Hsiao-kang is the same alienated youth whose chance encounter with Shiang-chyi provided the spark that fueled Tsai’s earlier films. Once again, these two lost souls cross paths—he now works as an actor in no-budget porn films, and she wanders around Taipei, hoarding bottles of water because of a serious drought. In fact, the government is recommending that people eat watermelons to hydrate themselves. This fruit sets in motion a perverse (and often hilarious) symbolic theme throughout much of the film. As in his earlier film The Hole, Tsai adds trashy, campy musical numbers into the narrative. These sequences play against the raw sex scenes, creating a bizarre, existential chaos. The filmmaker has created a perfectly realized alternative universe in his ongoing exploration of sex, bodies, and loneliness. His stationary camera perfectly illustrates the isolation and exploitation the characters are trapped in—yet the film is as funny as it is emotionally tortured. Tsai’s characters are indeed wayward clouds, drifting through life without purpose, in a world without water. And prepare yourself for the film’s unbelievable final scene, which manages to be both weirdly erotic and profoundly disturbing.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Kuei-Mei Yang, Sumomo Yozakura | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Alba Regia Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival

日日夜夜 | Night and Day

A story of an entrepreneurial miner racked by guilt over the death of his lover’s husband. Set in the fictional community of Tianquan, somewhere in bleak northern China, coal miner Li Guangsheng lives and works with the older Zhongmin, a father figure. Guangsheng, who is secretly having a hotsyhotsy affair with Zhongmin’s wife, is mortified when Zhongmin dies in a mine explosion and blames himself for not saving his friend. Suffering an attack of impotence, he sends Zhongmin’s widow away. After buying the mine under a new government policy designed to encourage private initiative, Guangsheng works like a Trojan to clear and re-open the site. He’s joined by Zhongmin’s son, A-fu, in his attempt to make a success of the mine.

Directed by Chao Wang | Starring : Lei Liu, Lan Wang, Ming Xiao, Guilin Sun, Zheng Wang | Presented at Nantes Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

不见 | The Missing

Two stories are intercut: In one, an old woman searches frantically for her missing grandson; in the other, a teenage boy’s grandfather disappears. Lee Kang-sheng’s The Missing is a sad and haunting film which builds very slowly to an obscure symbolic ending, making you want to watch it again right away in order to view it in a different light. While not quite living up to the standard of the best work of Lee’s esteemed mentor Tsai Ming-liang, The Missing is an admirable debut. The city of Taipei becomes an alienating dystopia in this minimalist directorial debut from Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng. A grandmother loses her grandson in a park and spends the remainder of the day searching for him. Meanwhile, a troubled teenager’s grandfather similarly disappears. The two searchers wander the city until, eventually, their paths cross. The Missing shared the New Currents award with the Iranian film Tiny Snowflakes at the 2003 Pusan International Film Festival.

Directed by Kang-sheng Lee | Starring : Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Chang Chea, Chun Shih, Shiang-chyi Chen | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Athens Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Flanders Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Ljubljana Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Bratislava Film Festival, Febio 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

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

小武 | Pickpocket

From award-winning 6th generation Chinese director Jia Zhangke comes the story of Xiao Wu. A small town pickpocket, like his friends never having managed to get away from the streets, he finds himself alone with his troubles. A local cop is out to get him and his love affair with Mei Mei, the local karaoke hostess, is going no where. He realizes it’s times to think about his future, but can he find the force to break with his criminal past? A new look at modern China in the debut film of one of contemporary cinema’s greatest artists.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Hongwei Wang, Hao Hongjian, Zuo Baitao, Ma Jinrei, Liu Junying | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, London Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival

香港制造 | Made in Hong Kong

Autumn Moon is one step short of a triad, and an ocean removed from respectability. A go-nowhere, no-nothing nobody, Moon is the boss of his own gang, which has one member, a retarded fellow named Sylvester, and passes his time playing basketball and collecting debts for local triad Wing. Marginalized by society and perhaps his own poor self-image, Moon nonetheless attempts to make his mark on the world, finding direction in his love for Ping, a young girl suffering from renal failure, and a chance connection to Susan, a school girl who committed suicide. Moon’s quest for personal significance is full of startling violence, lyrical emotion and surprising irony, and director Fruit Chan’s camera is right there, infusing this street level Hong Kong tale with a vibrant and affecting immediacy. Made in Hong Kong succeeds on multiple levels – as a tale of disaffected youth, as a rude answer to the gangster-glorifying Young and Dangerous films, and as an affecting portrait of what it means to be born, bred, and buried in Hong Kong.

Directed by Fruit Chan | Starring : Sam Lee, Neiky Yim Hui-Chi, Wenders Li, Carol Lam Kit-Fong, Amy Tam Ka-Chuen | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Gijón Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

找乐 | For Fun

The Beijing Trilogy begins with a loving but unsentimental tribute to traditions and people forced into obsolescence. Required to retire from his job as a utility man at a Peking Opera theater, Old Han is at loose ends, wandering the backstreets of Beijing looking for something to correct. When he comes upon a group of amateur musicians in a public park, this inveterate meddler finds an outlet for his autocratic tendencies.

Directed by Ying Ning | Starring : Zongluo Huang, Wenjie Huang, Shanxu Han, Shihua Feng, He Ming | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival

妈妈 | Mama

The film focuses on a librarian struggling to raise her mentally handicapped son in modern day Beijing while at the same time dealing with an absent and unresponsive husband. The story garnered much criticism from state-censors, who found the film too dark. While the film was originally written to end on the dour note of the mother euthanizing her son, director Zhang Yuan eventually opted for a more open-ended and ambiguous conclusion.

Directed by Yuan Zhang | Starring : Qing Yan, Xiaodan Yang | Presented at Nantes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Venice 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

胭脂扣 | Rouge

Starring late Hong Kong legends Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, Rouge from acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Kwan tells a sad and enchanting love story about passion, dedication, fate, and karma. Fleur is the blue angel in one of Hong Kong’s “flower houses” – bordellos and night clubs of the 1930’s. A detached and beautiful performer, she falls in love with Twelfth Master Chan, heir to a chain of pharmacies. They agree to a suicide pact. Jump ahead 50 years to modern Hong Kong: Fleur’s ghost appears in Yuen’s newspaper office, wanting to place an ad to find Chan, who never arrived in the afterlife. Yuen, and his equally bewildered girl friend, An Chor, are captivated by Fleur and her story.

Directed by Stanley Kwan | Starring : Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Alex Man, Emily Chu, Irene Wan | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival

冬冬的假期 | A Summer at Grandpa’s

In Hou Hsiao-hsien’s early film, an eleven year-old Taipei boy, Tung-Tung and his 4-year old sister Ting-Ting are sent to the country to spend the summer with their grandparents after their mother falls ill. The children’s summer is delightfully carefree, but the adult world slowly encroaches on their play. Their uncle impregnates a girl but falls in love with a different girl, and two of his pals are wanted for robbing and beating a pair of motorists. A developmentally disabled neighbor causes more controversy, but also rescues Ting-Ting from an oncoming train (she’s stuck there due to a thoughtless prank played on her by her brother and his friends). And Tung-Tung worries over his mother, hoping for news of her recovery.

Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou | Starring : Wong Kai-Gwong, Shuzhen Li, Ching-kuo Yan, Bor Jeng Chen, Hsiu-Ling Lin | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Nantes Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

风柜来的人 | The Boys from Fengkuei

Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.

Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou | Starring : Doze Niu, Shih Chang, Hsiu-Ling Lin, Shufang Chen, Lai-Yin Yang | Presented at Nantes Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival