Girls Always Happy
China
•
1h 55m
Directed by Yang Mingming • Drama • With Yang Mingming, Nai An • 2018 • 116 minutes
Rising Chinese director Yang Mingming both directs and stars in GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY – a mother-daughter story that goes for the jugular.
Wu (Yang Mingming) and her mother (Nai An) live in a Beijing hutong – an old community of cramped alleyways where everyone knows your business and houses are so close together you can smell when neighbors start using a new cooking oil.
It’s not just the neighborhood that’s claustrophobic. At the heart of GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY is the relationship between Wu, an aspiring screenwriter in her 20s, and her bitter, superstitious mother, who has recently turned to writing as well. The tension between the pair is raw, honest, mean, and sometimes funny – with no blow too low and no memory too painful to poke at. But their relationship has its moments of intimacy and tenderness too, especially over meals in their leaky, jam-packed home.
Emotionally intense and sometimes jarring, GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY is a film about fraught relationships, life in contemporary Beijing, and the challenge of finding your way forward while tied down by the past.
Up Next in China
-
The Iron Ministry
Directed by J. P. Sniadecki • Documentary • 2014 • 83 minutes
Filmed over three years on China's railways, J. P. Sniadecki's masterful documentary traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, language and gesture. Scores of rail journey...
-
Jinpa
Directed by Pema Tseden • Drama • With Jinpa, Genden Phuntsok, Sonam Wangmo • 2019 • 87 minutes
This is a story of revenge and redemption.
On an isolated road passing through the vast barren plains of Tibet, a truck driver who has accidentally run over a sheep chances upon a young man who is hi...
-
Late Summer
Directed by Yi Cui • Documentary • 2016 • 13 minutes
LATE SUMMER captures a centuries-old Beijing theatre in its incarnation as a modern-day transient space.
