达达 | Dada’s Dance

After her mother’s lecherous boyfriend reveals she’s adopted, incorrigible flirt Dada (Xinyun Li) skips town — with hopelessly smitten boy-next-door Zhou (Xiaofeng Li) in tow — in search of her birth mother. Framed by a coming-of-age narrative, director Zhang Yuan’s dreamy, sensual film is an evocative reflection on love, youth and disaffectation in contemporary society.

Directed by Yuan Zhang | Starring : Xiaofeng Li, Ke Gai, Yi Liu, Tao Zhao, Qiang Chen | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

和你在一起 | Together

Chen Kaige, director of the Oscar-nominated Farewell My Concubine, composes a richly imagined and “tender symphony” (Screen International) about love, ambition and destiny in China’s high-pressure world of classical music. Surging with “warmth, humanity and a sense of humor” (The Hollywood Reporter) , this lyrical, enchanting “heartwarmer” (Variety) is a “sure fire crowd pleaser” (Los Angeles Times)! When a violin prodigy Xiaochun and his father head to Beijing seeking fame and fortune, they soon discover a fierce world of cutthroat ambition. But when Xiaochun is “adopted” by a famous music tutor, success finally seems within reach – until a shocking discovery begins to unravel his entire world, and the boy must make the most difficult choice of his life. Can he achieve the fame his father had always hoped for without losing the extraordinary passion that sets him apart?

Directed by Kaige Chen | Starring : Peiqi Liu, Yun Tang, Hong Chen, Zhiwen Wang, Kaige Chen | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Moscow Film Festival, Copenhagen Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival

鬼子来了 | Devils on the Doorstep

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and banned in its native country, Jiang Wen’s ravishingly photographed anti-war epic is set in 1945 in a Japanese-occupied rural Chinese village. Wen stars as Ma Dasan, a peasant, who, one night at gunpoint, is compelled to shelter two prisoners. One is a captured Japanese soldier who wants to be killed, the other his Chinese interpreter, who wants to stay alive. As the days turn into months, Dasan and his fellow villagers keep their unwanted guests hidden from the Japanese forces, while deciding whether or not to execute their captives. The film’s rich, bold cinematography is matched only by its approach to the subject matter, which, in turn, attracted the unwanted attention of the Chinese censors who ultimately banned it from Chinese screens.

Directed by Wen Jiang | Starring : Wen Jiang, Teruyuki Kagawa, Ding Yuan, Yihong Jiang, Zhijun Cong | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival