周渔的火车 | Zhou Yu’s Train

Gong Li, the female icon of modern Chinese cinema, teams up with Sun Zhou, following their collaboration on the moving, and award-winning, drama “Breaking The Silence”. She gives a stupendous performance in possibly the most sensual role of her career, as a woman caught between two lovers, and two dimensions of desire. Zhou Yu, a ceramic artisan in China’s rural northwest, has a deep rapport with Chen Qing, a shy, sensitive poet. Taking a long train ride every weekend just to make mad passionate love with him, her longing seems insatiable. Until one day, she meets the hedonistic vet Zhang Qiang, and begins a torrid affair which takes her to another train station, and another level of lust.

Directed by Zhou Sun | Starring : Li Gong, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Honglei Sun, Zhixiong Li, Wei Liu | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Maine Film Festival

漂亮妈妈 | Breaking the Silence

Internationally-renowned actress Gong Li gives a wondrous performance in Breaking the Silence, an emotional drama from director Sun Zhou. Gong Li plays Sun Liying, a stubborn, independent woman struggling with her assigned lot in life. A single mother, she works to raise and educate her deaf son Zheng Da (Gao Xin) without support from her uncaring ex-husband (Guan Yue). Despite living beneath the indifferent shadow of modern Chinese society, Sun Liying gives her all to provide for her child, and her effort proves stirring and dramatic. Sun Zhou gives Breaking the Silence a semi-documentary feel, and humanizes his Chinese lower class subjects without canonizing them. Sun Liying is portrayed as simply a caring, loving mother who wishes the best for her child, and cares little for the politics or social issues of larger China. A refreshingly human film, Breaking the Silence is another milestone performance from Gong Li, whose powerful work earned accolades at film festivals worldwide.

Directed by Zhou Sun | Starring : Li Gong, Xin Gao, Liping Lü, Jing-ming Shi, Yue Guan | Presented at Berlin Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival

荆轲刺秦王 | The Emperor and the Assassin

A lavishly produced historical drama from China, The Emperor and the Assassin tells the complex, multi-facetted story of the man who became the first Emperor of a unified China, another man who has sworn to kill him, and a woman who is loved by both men. Late in the Third Century B.C., when China was comprised of seven rival kingdoms, Ying Zheng was the leader of Qin. Ying Zheng had a dream in which he joined together the seven kingdoms into a single utopian state, and taking this as a mandate from God, he invaded the nearby state of Han as the first step toward this goal. However, not everyone in the neighboring states was happy with Ying Zheng’s crusade, which seemed to indicate a lengthy war with many casualties. Lady Zhao, Ying’s lover, devised a scheme to help Ying Zheng take over the nearby and uncooperative state of Yan; she fabricated a fake assassination plot against him, and framed the leader of Yan, once Ying Zheng’s childhood friend, as the man behind the murderous plot. However, Lady Zhao did not choose the would-be assassin wisely; while Jing Ke loved her and was willing to do her bidding, Jing Ke’s previous assassination assignment caused the unintended death of an innocent blind girl, which left him full of regret and a bit unstable. When Jing Ke learned a closely guarded secret about Ying Zheng’s past, he became blindly determined to kill the would-be emperor, whatever the cost.

Directed by Kaige Chen | Starring : Li Gong, Fengyi Zhang, Xuejian Li, Yongfei Gu, Zhiwen Wang | Presented at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, AFI Film Festival, Reykjavik Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival

心香 | The True-Hearted

One day Jing Jing, a ten-year-old boy, moves to his grandfather’s house in the south because of his parents’ divorce. His grandfather, a Beijing Opera actor, is not at all happy, since he had opposed his daughter’s marriage. Jing Jing gets into a trouble at school. The film illustrates classical Beijing Opera in different generations and the boy’s process of growing-up.

Directed by Zhou Sun | Starring : Yang Fei, Xu Zhu, Lili Fu, Yumei Wang, Jielin He | Presented at Hawaii Film Festival