颐和园 | Summer Palace

From the director of Purple Butterfly and Suzhou River comes Lou Ye’s sprawling epic Summer Palace . Yu Hong (Lei Hao) is a rebellious young woman from a small Chinese town transplanted to a politically charged Beijing University in the late 1980s. The country’s social turmoil is witnessed through its disaffected youth, whose newfound sexuality and activism culminate in violent suppression. Spanning nearly 20 years of modern Chinese history, Summer Palace projects the country’s struggle for definition through the eyes and heart of a young woman illequipped to handle it. While drifting between the arms of two men, her love fervent for both, Yu Hong’s existential crisis mirrors that of her nation. Will the chaos of society lead her to its same tragic fate?

Directed by Ye Lou | Starring : Hao Lei, Lin Cui, Yihong Duan, Xiaodong Guo, Xueyun Bai | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, Pusan Film Festival, Oslo Film Festival, Miyazaki Film Festival

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

蓝色爱情 | A Love of Blueness

Rookie policeman Tai Lin yearned to be an artist before he failed an examination and followed in his father’s footsteps. One day he interrupts an apparent suicide attempt by a woman standing on the edge of a bridge. He detains her when she claims to have murdered her husband, despite her protests that it’s all a joke. It turns out that Liu Yun is a performance artist, but Tai Lin is not amused and is glad to be rid of her when she is released.

Directed by Jianqi Huo | Starring : Yueming Pan, Rujun Ten, Quan Yuan, Gang Wang, Yong Dong | Presented at Montréal Film Festival, Cairo Film Festival