泪王子 | Prince of Tears

Largely based on Yonfan’s childhood memories, Prince of Tears is akin to a sumptuous fairy tale. Alternately magnified through the eyes of innocent children and darkened by the disturbed dreams of frightened, guilty adults, the realities of a little-known era are explored through Yonfan’s powerful vision. As in the best of fables, here too we have a handsome prince and a beautiful princess, a charming fairy and a mean ogre. Elegantly shot, the film weaves the characters and their stories together in a mysterious and lyrical fashion. Yonfan’s pristine touch as production designer seamlessly matches the vibrant light and colour of Chin Ting-chang’s cinematography. As a result, the film’s stunning look provides a stark contrast to the terror within the environment. As both an exquisite rhapsody of emotions and an intriguing historical account, Yonfan’s work is utterly unique. It charms, evokes and informs, perfectly capturing the confusion of adolescence, when the world is full of beauty one moment and immersed in darkness the next.

Directed by Yonfan | Starring : Hsiao-chuan Chang, Terri Kwan, Wing Fan, Kenneth Tsang, Jack Kao | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Dubai Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Moscow Film Festival

复仇 | Vengeance

What is vengeance if you can’t remember who it is you’re avenging? Isn’t memory what vengeance is all about? Vengeance is always personal, and usually results in at least a few more deaths than originally intended, many of them more than a little mordantly ironic. That’s part of what makes a revenge thriller thrilling, and Johnnie To’s terrific, slow-burn triad actioner Vengeance, adds a memory glitch to those thrills. Vengeance is a rich, fragrant reduction of To’s favorite themes (male bonding and codes of loyalty, the triad underworld, vengeance) trademarks (slow-motion clouds of blood, unforgettable set-pieces, impossibly sleek cinematography, brooding men, black humor) and actors. One splendid difference: Vengeance stars French actor and singer Johnny Hallyday (adding a nice tip of the chapeau to the French noirs of the ‘60s, when Hallyday had his rock and roll heyday). Hallyday plays François Costello, a Parisian restaurant owner who is in Macau at the request of his daughter—to avenge a savage attack on her family. Costello crosses paths with a crack team of triad hit men, whom he then hires to carry out his own revenge plan—a plan growing increasingly hazy due to his deteriorating memory. The craggy, lived-in face of Hallyday is as riveting as To’s mad scenes of mayhem, which include a fierce nighttime shootout as clouds pass over the full moon and—shootouts being To’s stock in trade—an epic battle in a junkyard that has to be seen to be believed. Vengeance, indeed, is a dish best served by Johnnie To.

Directed by Johnnie To | Starring : Johnny Hallyday, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Ka Tung Lam, Simon Yam, Suet Lam | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Oldenburg Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Milwaukee 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

梅兰芳 | Forever Enthralled

Acclaimed Fifth Generation director Chen Kaige brings the tumultuous life of Peking Opera legend Mei Lanfang to the big screen in the highly anticipated biopic Forever Enthralled. The inspiration for Leslie Cheung’s character in Chen Kaige’s 1993 masterpiece Farewell My Concubine, Mei Lanfang was one of the greatest Peking Opera stars of modern China. An actor who specializes in female roles, he was renowned for his great beauty on stage and performed extensively around the world, famously introducing Peking Opera to Western audiences. Pulling viewers into a riveting world of musical allure and historical tumult in early 20th century China, Forever Enthralled follows Mei Lanfang’s amazing, inevitable rise to fame – from his bold challenges against his teacher as a teenager, to his US tour that brought New York to its feet, and finally to his refusal to sing during the Japanese Occupation period. Portrayed in youth by newcomer Yu Shaoqun and in adulthood by Hong Kong star Leon Lai, Mei Lanfang embodies the professional and emotional struggles of a man whose life belonged not to himself, but to the stage.

Directed by Kaige Chen | Starring : Leon Lai, Ziyi Zhang, Honglei Sun, Hong Chen, Xueqi Wang | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival

地下的天空 | The Shaft

In a mining town in western China, separately, we follow three members of a family. Each individual family members’ story flows from one to another chronologically, although they do not simply trace the continual development of a single family. There is the daughter who has to choose between her dreams and a suitable husband, the son who is about to start work down the mine, and the father who has just retired. Their lives are inextricably bound together as they symbolically represent the men and women from all mining towns who must accept their thwarted dreams and aspirations, and learn to accept their lot in life.

Directed by Chi Zhang | Starring : Deyuan Luo, Xuan Huang, Luoqian Zheng, Chen Li, Qiya Gong | Presented at Edinburgh Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Hamburg Film Festival, Ghent Film Festival, Marrakech Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival

红色康拜因 | The Red Awn

Whenever the wheat becomes golden, thousands of floaters will leave their homes and migrate from one place to another to make a living by working in the wheat fields. A 50-year-old father leaves his wife and son in their hometown and, in order to make money, goes to the city for five years. The 17–year-old son grows up in the countryside alone. At summer’s end, the father returns and decides to drive the red combine during the harvest with his son. On their way, an irresponsible father and a resentful son try to rebuild their bond, to face their destiny.

Directed by Shangjun Cai | Starring : Lu Huang, Yulai Lu, Jianbin Chen, Shi Junhui, Hong Wang | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival

夜宴 | The Banquet

In 907 AD, the Tang Dynasty is in tatters; infighting snarls the imperial family. Crown Prince Wu Luan loves Little Wan, but his father takes her as his Empress. Wu Luan goes into exile, studying dance and music. His uncle murders his father, taking throne and Empress; uncle sends assassins to kill Wu Luan. The Crown Prince eludes death and comes to court. The Emperor arranges for Little Wan’s coronation and dispatches Wu Luan to a distant land; he then calls for a midnight banquet on the 100th day of his rule. Poison, treachery, Wu Luan’s return, and the love of the innocent Qing for Wu Luan set up the final entanglements. No Fortinbras or Horatio lay the dead to rest.

Directed by Xiaogang Feng | Starring : Ziyi Zhang, You Ge, Daniel Wu, Xun Zhou, Xiaoming Huang | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Portland Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Dubai Film Festival

今天的鱼怎么样？ | How Is Your Fish Today?

How Is Your Fish Today? tells the story of a famous screenwriter whose film scripts have all been rejected by Chinese censors. He writes a script about a man named Lin Hao for his producer, who expects it to be a Chinese version of The Fugitive. Upon reading Rao’s arthouse script, the producer rejects it as the worst screenplay he has ever read. Rao is infuriated with the response and kills Lin’s wife. Lin finds out while cheating on his wife and immediately sends Rao a thank you note. Rao is upset that Lin did not get adequately infuriated and kills all of Lin’s dogs. Lin then calls in three Nazis he knew from back in the day to poop all over Rao’s lawn. Rao is discouraged and now sees his mistake. However, Rao does not abandon his story, instead he rewrites it. Rao begins to live through his main character, Lin Hao, as he writes about him fleeing his home on a journey of self-discovery. Hao makes his way to Mohe, as does Rao, and the writer enters his own narrative. Both characters, in a struggle for freedom, have left their homes behind, but while Lin Hao is running away, Hui Rao is searching for something.

Directed by Xiaolu Guo | Starring : Xiaolu Guo, Ning Hao, Hui Rao, Zijiang Yang | Presented at Edinburgh Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, New Zealand Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival

可可西里 | Mountain Patrol

Kekexili is based on actual events. From Mainland China, the film tells the story of Ga Yu, a reporter from Beijing who in 1996 travels to the eponymous region on the border of Tibet, where some local men have organized a civilian patrol to fight the poachers who are decimating the region’s endangered population of Tibetan antelopes, prized for their pelts, which are then exported, to be sold as (once trendy) shahtoosh shawls. As Ga Yu arrives in a remote town, a member of the patrol has recently been coldly executed by the poachers, and the taciturn leader, Ritai, is heading out on another patrol, determined to find those responsible. Ga Yu convinces Ritai to let him tag along by suggesting that a story in a Beijing newspaper might spur the Chinese government to take more forceful action to protect the antelopes. The group leaves on their perilous, high altitude journey. From the film’s opening, with the aforementioned murder, it’s a harrowing trip. Kekexili captures the deprivation and danger of this harsh land, and the necessary ruggedness of the people who live there, with impeccable clarity. Filmmaker Lu tells his story visually, for the most part, with exemplary economy. He doesn’t spend any more time than needed on characterization. He leaves it to his audience to figure out what motivates Ritai and his team to risk their lives in order to protect the animals. Whatever it is, it’s clear that it goes beyond a mere concern for the environment. Ritai ends up completely possessed with finding the gunmen who slaughtered the most recent herd of antelope. He puts his own and many other lives at risk in this pursuit. At the film’s midpoint, Ritai and his men capture a group of poachers, including a kindly old man who tells the patrolmen that he used to be a shepherd, and was pushed into a life of criminality by hard times. The filmmaker doesn’t judge these characters, any more than he does the film’s would-be heroes. It’s clear that on a thematic level, Lu’s primary interest is human, rather than environmental.

Directed by Chuan Lu | Starring : Duobuji, Lei Chang, Liang Qi, Xueying Zhao, Zhanlin Ma | Presented at Tokyo Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Montréal Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, Marrakech Film Festival, Kerala Film Festival

好大一对羊 | Two Great Sheep

The film follows a peasant couple, Zhao Deshan and his wife Xiuzhi, living in rural Yunnan province near Zhaotong in southern China. Their lives are thrown into upheaval when the local mayor “rewards” them with two foreign sheep donated by a former villager, now an official in Beijing. The couple is then tasked with breeding the sheep for their wool and to bring prosperity to their small community. Much to their chagrin, the sheep do not take to their new environment and the couple are forced into ever more ingenious ways of making the sheep appear greater than they really are. As they do so, they also come to value the sheep as companions in their family. When it becomes clear that the two “great” sheep are not the boon they were thought to be, the local authorities repossess the animals.

Directed by Hao Lui | Starring : Yunkun Sun, Zhikun Jiang, Dajiang Chen, Shengling Zhao | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Seattle 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

一个陌生女人的来信 | Letter from an Unknown Woman

A man rides home through a war-ridden city. A letter waits for him at home. It’s a letter written by a woman before her death. In it, she tells him that she loves him, a lifelong passion that hasn’t lessened with time, but of which he knew nothing. She recounts their short but passionate young love – to him, simply one more brief romance among many; the difficulties she had in raising their child; and their final meeting, at which he didn’t recognize her. Now that she has lost her son (the only thread linking her to the man she loved), she no longer has the strength to live on… Shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.

Directed by Jinglei Xu | Starring : Jinglei Xu, Wen Jiang, Feihu Sun, Xiaoming Su, Jue Huang | Presented at San Sebastian Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival

哭泣的女人 | Cry Woman

Wang Guixiang and her husband are a migrant couple living in Beijing. Wang is eking out a career selling pirated DVDs when disaster strikes and police confiscate her DVD stocks, and her husband is arrested after getting into a fight over a mahjong game. Forced to return to Guizhou, she meets an old boyfriend, who suggests she take a job as a professional mourner. Surprisingly, Wang finds herself very good at her new job as a “cry woman” and soon discovers that her talents are very much in demand.

Directed by Bingjian Liu | Starring : Longjun Li, Qin Liao, Xingkun Wei, Ging Wen, Jiayue Zhu | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival

寻枪 | The Missing Gun

A small-town cop wakes up one morning after a wild night of celebration to discover that his gun – a rare, state-issued firearm loaded with three bullets – is missing. While he attempts to retrace his steps from the previous night – his ex-girlfriend turns up dead, and the bullet appears to be from his gun… Now, in order to clear his name and convince the authorities that he’s not the killer, he must race against time to find the gun before the other two bullets find their next victims. An international cast of exciting and sexy superstars go full-force in Missing Gun – a cool, stylish action thriller abut love and power and one man’s attempt to honor the delicate and explosive balance between the two.

Directed by Chuan Lu | Starring : Wen Jiang, Yujuan Wu, Jing Ning, Shi Liang, Xiaoning Liu | Presented at Pusan Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Moscow Film Festival, Karlovy Vary 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

洗澡 | Shower

Shenzhen businessman, Da Ming, goes home to Beijing when he thinks his father has died. He finds his father hard at work at the family’s bathhouse (the false message was a ruse of Da’s mentally-handicapped, exuberant brother, Er Ming, to get Da home). Da stays a couple days, observing his father being social director, marriage counselor, and dispute mediator for his customers and a boon companion to Er. Da is caught between worlds: the decaying district of his childhood and the booming south where he now lives with a wife who’s not met his family. When Da realizes his father’s health is failing and the district is slated for razing, he must take stock of family and future.

Directed by Yang Zhang | Starring : Xu Zhu, Cunxin Pu, Wu Jiang, Ding Li, Bing He | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Changchun Film Festival, Calgary Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival

美丽新世界 | A Beautiful New World

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

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

爱情万岁 | Vive l’amour

In the overpopulated metropolis of Taipei, two men and a woman literally circle each other. Mei-mei is a lonely real-estate agent who works long hours. One day she misplaces the keys to one of her vacant apartments. The young, hesitant, and gay Hsiao-kang, who sells funeral-urn space, takes the keys and happily takes to living surreptitiously in the apartment, unaware that Mei and the footloose, cocky Ah-jung also use the flat regularly.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Chao-jung Chen, Kuei-Mei Yang, Yi-Ching Lu | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival

喜宴 | The Wedding Banquet

A pair of Chinese-Caucasian gay couple, two Taiwan traditional parents and a girl who is willing to have a deceiving marriage for a green card have joined together and become a story full of love and sensibility. Director Ang Lee has entwined all the controversial issues of that time in a realistic and spontaneous way, which has probed into the issues like clashes between a grow-in-the-west son and the Chinese’s desire to look for freedom at all cost. Starting with all the dilemmas and ending with their unspoken compromises, the love and understanding among the family has been impenetrated throughout the movie, wich has shown the excellent filming technique of Director Ang Lee.

Directed by Ang Lee | Starring : Winston Chao, Ya-lei Kuei, Sihung Lung, May Chin, Mitchell Lichtenstein | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival