暖 | Nuan

Like Huo’s Postmen in the Mountains, Nuan is a rural drama. The film follows Lin Jinghe, a young man who, for the last ten years, has been living in the big city. When he returns home, he runs into his childhood love, Nuan. Years earlier, Nuan and Jinghe had been schoolmates. Nuan, the most popular girl in school, had fallen in love with an acrobat from a traveling troupe. When the acrobat eventually abandons her, Nuan finds herself drawn to Jinghe. One day, while playing with Jinghe, Nuan is permanently injured when she falls off a swing. Jinghe, seeing an opportunity to escape the small village heads to the city, but promises that he will be back for Nuan. Like the acrobat, however, he soon forgets about his childhood love. Now, ten years later, he has finally returned. Nuan, however, has married a local mute.

Directed by Jianqi Huo | Starring : Xiaodong Guo, Jia Li, Teruyuki Kagawa, Xiaotong Guan, Guitian Sun | Presented at Tokyo 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