Directed by Na Jiazuo • Documentary • With Li Jiuxiao, Miyi Huang • 2023 • 93 minutes
A gritty portrait of a group of outcasts in a fading Chinese city circa 2004. With his father requiring costly and continual hospital treatment, the aimless Dongzi (Li Jiuxiao) works as a debt collector for the local mafia. Further complicating things, he's in love with the boss’s wife (Huang Miyi), a troubled tattoo parlor owner who dreams of divorcing her husband and escaping her dead-end life.
Up Next in China
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Youth (Homecoming)
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2024 • 160 minutes
Shi Wei, a young migrant garment worker, flops back onto a pile of soft fabric bundles on his workshop’s floor, cellphone in hand. “Shit, I’m exhausted,” he says to the boss who’s trying to get him to sew more clothing before the Lunar New...
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Youth (Hard Times)
Directed by Wang Bing • Documentary • 2024 • 226 minutes
YOUTH (HARD TIMES) is the second installment in Chinese director Wang Bing’s monumental series chronicling the lives of migrant garment workers — some as young as 15 — in the Zhili district of Huzhou City. Wang immerses himself in the live...
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Only the River Flows
Directed by Wei Shujun • Drama • With Zhu Yilong • 2023 • 112 minutes
When a woman’s body is discovered on the banks of a river near a small town in southern China, it’s up to police investigator Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), working out of an abandoned cinema, to find the killer—but what at first appear...
