另一半 | The Other Half

Xiaofen works as a clerk in a law office in the industrial city of Zigong. Her unending daily routine is to record clients’ claims, complaints and arguments in cases ranging from divorces and spousal abuse to medical malpractice and industrial accidents. Xiaofen’s life has its own crises: her boyfriend, Deng Gang, is released from prison but quickly gives in to the gambling bug that put him there; her mother pressures her into a date with a suitor whose main interest is showing her bland business photos on his laptop computer; and she finally meets her estranged father. All these incidents build to a momentum when Deng Gang is suspected of murder and disappears, and the city is threatened by toxic pollution after an explosion in a chemical plant. In the ensuing evacuation, many people go missing. Uncertain of her future, Xiafen walks down empty streets while a public address system intones the names of the missing. The enigmatic end sequence seems to plead for a reverse of this erosion and loss of community, and suggests that some good may come from all this misfortune. With deadpan humor, deeply felt sensitivity and social commentary, director Ying Liang establishes the authorial voice promised in his short films and first feature, Taking Father Home. Here, he cleverly mixes major and minor crises, personal and political dilemmas, to create a chilling reflection on life today.

Directed by Liang Ying | Starring : Xiaofei Zeng, Gang Deng, Ke Zhao, Xigui Chen, Huibin Liu | Presented at Jeonju Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, San Sebastian 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

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

蔓延 | Pirated Copy

Set against the backdrop of the contemporary black market for pirated DVDs in Beijing, Pirated Copy is a character-driven drama about the passion two couples have for each other and for film. It “demonstrates that [He is] one of the most interesting and versatile directors among China’s ‘Sixth Generation’”

Directed by Jianjun He | Starring : Bo Yu, Yamei Wang, Xiaoguang Hu, Narenqimuge, Yong Zhang | Presented at Vienna Film Festival, Singapore 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

任逍遥 | Unknown Pleasures

Unknown Pleasures, sequel to the widely praised Platform, again focuses on a generation of Chinese kids. In fragmentary observations, Jia sketches a picture of the lethargy of today’s youth, a generation that has grown up with technological gadgets, advertising and Internet. Jia refers to moments in the eventful year 2001, when an unemployed man blew up a whole building and the Olympic Summer Games of 2008 were granted to Beijing. In as far as the scenes were not improvised, the script of the film was inspired by work of the philosopher Zhuangzi, a Taoist who argues in favour of enjoying the (unknown) pleasures of life. The two unemployed kids Xiao Ji and Bin Bin have plenty of time for pleasures like hanging out and falling in love. In the case of Xiao Ji the subject of his affections is Qiao Qiao, a dancer and model for an advertising campaign for a major Mongolian brand of drink. The fact that Qiao Qiao has a dangerous friend does not make much impression on Xiao Ji: he takes his inspiration from American crime films and most wants to die young. Bin Bin does not have much faith in the future either. His girlfriend is going to Beijing to study. She wants to become a businesswoman, while Bin Bin’s ambitions do not extend any further than karaoke and cartoons.

Directed by Zhang Ke Jia | Starring : Tao Zhao, Wei Wei Zhao, Qiong Wu, Hongwei Wang, Zhubin Li | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Belgrade Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival

美丽时光 | The Best of Times

Chang Tso-Chi’s film begins like a comedy about an extended family but turns into a reflection on the tragedy that befalls cousins Ah Wei and Ah Jie, a funny but troubled youth whose first job puts him in touch with a gun. Family patriarch, Ah Wei’s dad, is goaded by granny about gambling away the family’s money while Ah Jei’s father repetitively recounts his dishonorable discharge from the army decades earlier. The two men spend their evenings getting drunk, suggesting that Ah Wei and Ah Jei’s fates may have been better met young. Tragedy also befalls Ah Wei’s twin sister who suffers from leukemia, but Chang uses expressionistic, slightly comic allegory to end his film on an up note.

Directed by Tso-chi Chang | Starring : Wing Fan, Meng-jie Gao, Wan-mei Yu, Mao-ying Tien, Yu-Chih Wu | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Singapore 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

香港有个荷里活 | Hollywood Hong Kong

Sex, violence, and pork are the hallmarks of this ultra-black comedy from maverick Hong Kong filmmaker Fruit Chan. Boss Chu is the rotund proprietor of a fast-food stall specializing in pork located in a decaying Hong Kong shanty town. Boss Chu runs the business with his equally porcine sons Tiny and Ming. Living near the pork stall is a teenaged would-be gangster, Wong Chi-keung, who though e-mail makes the acquaintance of a young woman calling herself “Shanghai Angel Hung-Hung”, a prostitute recently arrived in Hong Kong from China. After doing frequent business with Wong, Hung-Hung begins frequenting the pork stall, where she becomes close friends with young Tiny. However, Ming soon develops a more carnal interest in Tiny’s new playmate, and Hung-Hung takes advantage of Ming’s infatuation by seducing him. Boss Chu is also attracted with the young prostitute, and she begins working her charms on the father of the family. Once Wong, Ming, and Boss have all fallen under Hung-Hung’s spell, the three men each begin receiving threatening letters from a lawyer, who claims that Hung-Hung is underage and that statutory rape charges will be filed against them unless they’re willing to pay, leading to some unpleasant visits from the blackmailer’s enforcers. Heunggong Yau Gok Holeiwut is the second film in a planned trilogy about Chinese prostitutes in Hong Kong, following Fruit Chan’s 2000 release Durian, Durian.

Directed by Fruit Chan | Starring : Xun Zhou, Glen Chin, Sai Man Ho, You-Nam Wong, Kit Man Tam | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Cinemanila 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

你那边几点 | What Time Is It Over There?

From acclaimed director Tsai Ming-Liang comes the quirky story of Hsiao Kang who sell watches in the street of Taipei for a living. A few Days after his father’s Death, he meet Shiang-Chyi, a young woman who leave for Paris the very next day. She persuades him to sell her his own watch, which has two dials, so that she can keep taipei time as well as local time, on her upcoming trip.Troubled y the behavior of this mother who prays constantly for the return of her late husband’s spirit, Hsiao Kang Take refuge in the memory of his brief encounter with Shiang-Chyi, In an effort to bridge the miles between them, he run around setting all the watches and clock in Taipei to Paris time. Meanwhile, in Paris, Shiang-Chyi confronts events that seem to be mysteriously connected with Hsiao Kang.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao, Cecilia Yip | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Jerusalem Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Bangkok Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Cinemanila Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

十七岁的单车 | Beijing Bicycle

Beijing: young men in packs, machismo, class divisions, violence, and indifference. Guei arrives from the country: toothbrushes, hotel foyers, and Qin, a rich neighbor in high heels, dazzle him. He gets a job as a messenger. The company issues him a bike, which he must pay for out of his wages. When it is stolen, Guei hunts for it. A student, Jian, has it; for him, it’s the key to teen society – with his pals and with Xiao, a girl he fancies. Guei finds the bike and stubbornly tries to reclaim it in the face of great odds. But for Jian to lose the bike would mean humiliation. The two young men, and the people around them, are swept up in the youths’ desperation.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Lin Cui, Bin Li, Xun Zhou, Yuanyuan Gao, Shuang Li | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival

爱你爱我 | Betelnut Beauty

In 21st Century Taipei, a restless city where young souls are set adrift, Feng and Fei-fei meet in a sudden summer afternoon thunderstorm. Feng, fresh out of the army, has just made a beeline for Taipei, eager to start a new life. Fei-fei has also recently turned a new page in her young life, having just run away from home. Fei-fei teams up with her friend, Yili, who works at a nightclub. They become “betelnut beauties” hawking their fare from a roadside stall of glass and neon. Betelnut, a legally sold chewing pepper that produces an effect not unlike marijuana, is a favorite among the working class men. Feng and Fei-fei quickly fall in love, two clueless souls clinging desperately to each other as they try to keep up with the punishing rush of city life.

Directed by Cheng-sheng Lin | Starring : Chen Chang, Angelica Lee, Leon Dai, Ming-chun Kao, Chen-Nan Tsai | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Jeonju Film Festival, Brisbane Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Flanders Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, Helsinki 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

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

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

过年回家 | Seventeen Years

A modest family is destined for tragedy due to the tense rivalry between two teenage stepsisters. In a fit of rage, Tao Lan accidentally kills her stepsister. Seventeen years later, she is part of the inmates selected for a furlough during the brief New Year holiday. Chen Jie, a young female guard notices that Tao Lan stays behind and does not seem to wish to go out. She escorts the solitary Tao Lan, now a stranger to life outside prison, to her old neighborhood. Tao Lan’s house has long been demolished due to wild demolitions and new constructions in Tianjin. Late in the evening, the two women arrive at the new home of Tao Lan’s aged parents, and Chen Jie witnesses the fragile emotional exchanges of a painful family reunion…

Directed by Yuan Zhang | Starring : Lin Liu, Bingbing Li, Yeding Li, Song Liang, Yun Li | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Gijón Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Jakarta Film Festival, Fajr Film Festival

男男女女 | Men and Women

Xiao Bo arrives in Beijing, gets a job at a boutique, and is invited to stay with his lady boss, Ah Qing, and her husband, Kang. Knowing that Xiao Bo is still single, Ah Qing recommends her best female friend, Ah Meng, to him. After a few dates, Ah Meng starts to suspect Xiao Bo is gay. She tells Ah Qing, who then informs Kang. After learning this, Kang attempts to rape Xiao Bo when Ah Qing isn’t at home. Xiao Bo leaves the house, quits the job and joins his old friend, Chong Chong, and realizes that he has a gay lover, Gui Gui. Some time later, Ah Qing confesses to Kang that she had an affair… with Ah Meng. On the other hand, Chong Chong tries to “convert” Xiao Bo, much to the dismay of Gui Gui.

Directed by Bingjian Liu | Starring : Qing Yang, Bo Yu, Kang Zhang, Jiangang Wei, Zi’en Cui | Presented at Locarno Film Festival, Mar del Plata Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival

天上人间 | Love Will Tear Us Apart

Ah Ying is a provincial prostitute from mainland China. With a short-term visa, she hopes to start a new life in Hong Kong. She hooks up with other immigrants: a woman who can no longer work as a dance instructor since she lost a leg, a porn enthusiast and an introvert addicted to hookers. Entrapped in dingy brothels, cramped lifts and karaoke, these new generation nomads are united in a common struggle. But the battle between homeland attachment and their new lives will tear them apart.

Directed by Nelson Yu Lik-wai | Starring : Tony Leung Ka Fai, Liping Lü, Ning Wang, Rolf Chow | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Stockholm Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

扁担.姑娘 | So Close to Paradise

From one of China’s most talented and controversial young filmmakers comes this striking gangster noir which was banned for 3 years by the Chinese government. Reminiscent of Hollywood’s classic B movies from the 1940’s and 50’s, the film tells the story of two country boys, Gao Ping and Dong Zi, who move to the big city to carve out new lives for themselves. While Dong Zi is content with his menial job hauling boxes around the docks, Gao Ping quickly enters a maze of gangsters, crime, and underworld alliances. When Gao Ping kidnaps and then falls in love with Ruan Hong, a beautiful, seductive nightclub singer, his fate is sealed.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Shi Yu, Tao Guo, Tong Wang, Tao Wu | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Auckland Film Festival, Montréal Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival

洞 | The Hole

The Hole uses an enigmatic symbolic language to explore social alienation in the bleak cityscapes of contemporary Taiwan. Seven days before the turn of the millennium, a rain-sodden Taipei City is under siege by a mysterious virus. Symptoms include fever and an acute photophobia that drives sufferers to scuttle like cockroaches in search of dark, isolated hiding places. As a result of ‘Taiwan Fever’ sections of the city are quarantined and their essential services cut off by the government. The film is set in an apartment block in a quarantine zone where residents, played by Lee Kang-Sheng and Yang Kuei-Mei, remain in defiance of quarantine regulations. Yang’s apartment, directly below Lee’s, develops a leak and a plumber in search of the leaking pipe bores a hole in Lee’s floor and Yang’s ceiling. The hole that now joins the two apartments is large enough to see through, and Yang and Lee develop an ambivalent, wordless relationship as a result of their new proximity. Yang succumbs to the virus, and in the final scene, Lee’s arm extends through the hole in her ceiling, offering her a glass of water. Finally, Yang grasps Lee’s arm and is lifted through the hole into the brightly lit offscreen space of Lee’s apartment.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Kuei-Mei Yang, Tien Miao, Hui-Chin Lin, Hsiang-Chu Tong | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Kerala Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Febio Film Festival, Buenos Aires Film Festival, Athens 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

愈快乐愈堕落 | Hold You Tight

Adapted from Wang Anyi’s award-winning novel, the film follows the life of a legendary Shanghai beauty, Wang Qiyao, whose fading glamour is mirrored by the prosperous growth of the city of Shanghai. The film co-stars Tony Leung Ka Fai, Hu Jun, Daniel Wu, and Huang Jue as men who fall for Wang Qiyao. Yet those she loves just leave her one after another when she grows old, and eventually she herself has to face what fate has prepared for her. The metropolitan city is perhaps the only thing that can survive all the drastic changes and remain forever young… Everlasting Regret resembles Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage thematically for both detail the rise and fall of a Shanghainese woman, but Everlasting Regret ambitiously covers a longer period from 1940s to 1980s, almost half a century. The nostalgic mood of the film reminds of Kwan’s best-known piece Rouge. Art Director William Chang, famous for creating a nostalgic atmosphere in Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love and 2046, successfully reconstructs the lifestyle of old Shanghai.

Directed by Stanley Kwan | Starring : Chingmy Yau, Sunny Chan, Eric Tsang, Lawrence Ko, Sandra Ng Kwan Yue | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, London Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Fribourg Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

美丽在唱歌 | Murmur of Youth

Two girls both named “Mei Li” who live their own drifting aimleasly life. One day, the creato let them come across and know closely in the ticket booth which marked “No Admittance” Finally, they find the love and enjoy their life experiences each other.

Directed by Cheng-sheng Lin | Starring : Rene Liu, Jing Tseng, Chin-Hsin Tsai, Vicky Wei, Chao-jung Chen | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival

春光乍泄 | Happy Together

Lai Yiu-Fai and Ho Po-Wing where in love when they arrived in Argentina from Hong-Kong. But something went wrong while they were driving south in search for adventures. One day, on the road, Ho Po-Wing walked away from his lover. Now, Lai works as doorman at a tango bar in Buenos Aires. He is trying to save enough for his air-ticket home. When Ho re-enters his life, bruised and bleeding from a beating, he gives him a bed but refuses to get back into a sexual relationship. Domesticity doesn’t suits Ho, who is soon spending nights out on the town. Lai quits his job and starts working in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, where he befriends Zhang, a kid from Taiwan. Without realising it, Lai’s life begins to take changes. Meanwhile Ho continues to fall into pieces…

Directed by Kar Wai Wong | Starring : Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung, Chen Chang, Gregory Dayton, Shirley Kwan | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, Montréal Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Arizona Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Reykjavik Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival

河流 | The River

Hsiao-kang shares an apartment in Taipei with his parents, but the three of them lead very separate lives. His mother works as an elevator attendant in a restaurant and is having an affair with a man who pirates porno vidotapes. Hsiao-kang is drifting through life without a job, while his father, a pensioner, pursues a solitary quest for illicit pleasures in the city’s gay saunas. As an extra in a film, Hsiao-kang plays a body adrift in the heavily polluted Tamsui River. He begins to suffer a terrible pain in his neck, but no one seems to able to cure him. In desperation, Hsiao-kang travels with his father to Taichung, to visit a faith healer. While waiting to see him, the father gets bored and decides to visit a local men’s sauna. Coincidentally, Hsiao-kang has the same idea… Life is like a river: there will always be some dark, deep, damp corners.

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai | Starring : Kang-sheng Lee, Chao-jung Chen, Shiang-chyi Chen, Yi-Ching Lu, Tien Miao | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Sao Paulo Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

极度寒冷 | Frozen

A stunning and demanding film that takes the audience into the world of Beijing’s artistic avant-garde in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A daring young artist in Beijing is obsessed with performance art and makes his own suicide his last work of art. On the longest day of the year he plans to melt a huge block of ice with his own body heat and die of hypothermia. He calls this protest against the coldness of society “Funeral on Ice.” Based upon a similar performance staged in Beijing and shot in 1994, “Frozen” is a unique work even among independently produced Chinese films.

Directed by Xiaoshuai Wang | Starring : Hongshen Jia, Xiaoqing Ma, Geng Li, Yongning Zhang, Jie Liu | Presented at Vancouver Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Jeonju Film Festival

东宫西宫 | East Palace, West Palace

The most daring and achieved of all the ‘illegal’ independent films made in China in the ’90s – and quite probably the last, since it prompted the Film Bureau to formally outlaw unauthorised production and confiscate the directors Zhang Yuan’s passport. The street urinals of a public park in the Chinese capital have become the favoured meeting point for homosexuals. A Lan, a sensitive young writer, likes strolling in the park. During a police raid, he finds himself at headquarters suffering a ft by the book ” interrogation. The questioning of A Lan quickly transforms into an unexpected reminiscence of his tumultuous life: his childhood, parents, school, first sexual experience, obligatory state work in the countryside, and then, a slow drift into the quest for true love. These brief intimate glimpses of A Lan’s life blur the interrogating officer’s feelings for his prisoner. A strange love story unfolds.

Directed by Yuan Zhang | Starring : Si Han, Jun Hu, Jing Ye, Wei Zhao | Presented at Mar del Plata Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival, Febio Film Festival

今天不回家 | Tonight Nobody Goes Home

A funny, light weight comedy from Sylvia Chang. We all know that yawning is contagious, but to the Chen family contagiousness extends to taking on an extra-marital affair. Gua Ah-leh is at the movie’s centre: she shines as Lung’s wife, who finds she has a thing or two to learn from the gigolo after Lung blithely. Lang Hisung plays old dentist for broad comedy (showing a different side from his starring roles in Ang Lee’s films); he is sixty years old but still physically fit and full of charisma. He wants to be able to experience the vitality of a burning passion for one last once. leaves her. The extra-familial affair is discovered.

Directed by Sylvia Chang | Starring : Sihung Lung, Ya-lei Kuei, Winston Chao, Rene Liu, Jordan Chan | Presented at Toronto Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival

太平。天國 | Buddha Bless America

In a sleepy part of rural Taiwan in the late 1960s, the life of a village is shattered when Uncle Sam arrives in tanks. The Yanks are there to take part in joint military exercises with Taiwanese troops, but the villagers take their compensation by direct methods – they steal anything that can be moved. One of the film’s great strengths is the way that writer Wu Nien-jen, in only his second feature as director, shades the comic tone. The film’s main character, Brain (Lin Cheng-sheng, himself a director), condemns the rampant theft but turns against the Americans when they take him for a beggar. He steals two huge boxes, not knowing what they contain.

Directed by Nien-Jen Wu | Starring : Cheng-sheng Lin, Chuan-Chen Yeh, Chung-Hsien Yang, Bin-hui Lee, Yung-Teh Hsu | Presented at Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Singapore Film Festival