Zhangke Jia

Young dancer Qiao falls for powerful mob boss Bin. After protecting him during a rival gang’s ambush, she ends up in prison. Upon release, some five years later, she seeks out Bin to restart their old life. But is that still possible? Their violent relationship develops from 2001 to 2017, which allows director Jia Zhangke to chronicle contemporary China – from mining ghost towns to entire villages sacrificed for new dams.

Mainland master Jia Zhangke scales new heights with Mountains May Depart. At once an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic that leaps from the recent past to the present to the speculative near-future, Jia's new film is an intensely moving study of how China's economic boom and the culture of materialism it has spawned has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

A Touch of Sin focuses on four characters, each living in different provinces, who are driven to violent ends. An angry miner, enraged by widespread corruption in his village, decides to take justice into his own hands. A rootless migrant discovers the infinite possibilities of owning a firearm. A young receptionist, who dates a married man and works at a local sauna, is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. And a young factory worker goes from one discouraging job to the next, only to face increasingly degrading circumstances.

In 1979, in a China undergoing rapid changes, it is still forbidden to listen to pop music. Platform is a record young people listen to in secret. Minliang and his friends, an official theatre company, present a play in praise of Mao Zedong. With the 1980s, the theatrical troupe’s life changes: pop music, permed hair, cigarettes... This feature film follows the artistic and emotional tribulations of the young artistes over a ten-year period against a backdrop of revolutionary disappointment, a bygone past and privatisation.

Jia Zhang-ke’s debut film tells the story of pickpocket Xiao Wu, who drifts aimlessly through the streets of the poor and dirty small town of Fenyang. He tries to hide his insecurity and lack of prospects behind a pair of big glasses and a cool demeanour but is increasingly losing his footing. His former friend Xiao Yong doesn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore; his love Mei Mei, who he met in a dingy karaoke bar, runs off with a richer man; and Xiao Wu’s father, who lives in a small mountain village, throws him out of the house after a fight. In the end, Xiao Wu is caught and handcuffed and taken away in full view of everyone on the whole street. Largely filmed with an ensemble of amateur actors, Xiao Wu draws a bleak picture of everyday life in China. The film premiered in the Berlinale Forum in 1998 and was an instant hit, making the director famous overnight.