Directed by Cai Chengjie • Drama • With Tian Tian, Gao Pengcheng, Wang Qilin, Shuyan Feng • 2018 • 120 minutes
Winner of the top prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival, director Cai Chengjie’s debut feature is, like its titular protagonist, unexpectedly powerful and fiercely unpredictable.
Deemed cursed by the local villagers, three-time widow Er Hao (Tian Tian) has her hands full with a rogue fireworks explosion, a tagalong teenager, and a veritable army of crazed local men who can’t keep their hands off her. Turned away when she seeks shelter from her neighbors and forced to take up residence in a cold camper van, Er Hao’s future looks as bleak as the stark, snowy countryside.
But a series of fluke changes in fortune causes Er Hao to embrace the mystical identity her villagers have assigned to her. As a sort of modern shaman, she steers superstitions into small subversions, helping others who once shunned her and proving that to survive as a woman is a kind of magic.
With a stunning array of visual styles and a genre-exploding approach to storytelling, THE WIDOWED WITCH is a simultaneously idealistic and despairing film—a bleak view wrapped in a fabulist aesthetic, and one that encompasses both magic realism and crushing social satire.
"Appealingly eccentric fable from Chinese newcomer Cai Chengjie." —Guy Lodge, Variety
Up Next in Across Asia
-
Tokyo Idols
Directed by Kyoko Miyake • Documentary • 2017 • 88 minutes
"IDOLS" has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. TOKYO IDOLS—an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet ...
-
The Gangster's Daughter
Directed by Meijuin Chen • Drama • With Jack Kao, Ally Chiu, Kao Meng Chieh, Ko Yu Luen, Lin Mei Zhen • 2017 • 105 minutes
When a typical teenage girl is reunited with her estranged gangster father after her mother's funeral, she discovers a life filled with the power and confidence she lacks. B...
-
Spring Tide
Directed by Lina Yang • Drama • With Hao Lei, Elaine Jin Yan-ling, Qu Junxi, Li Wenbo, Huang Shanghe
• 2019 • 124 minutesWhen a mother lives with her mother and her daughter, inevitable conflicts arise, including the revelation of a dark past. When these conflicts come to a boil during a famil...
