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 appears to be an open-and-shut case turns out to be only the first layer of an ever deepening mystery, as Ma’s inquiry reveals the hidden life of the rural community. Based on Yu Hua’s short novel Mistakes by the River, Wei’s bleakly atmospheric tour-de-force neo-noir is laced with gallows humor and touches of the surreal, its grungy, low-contrast 16mm photography a hand in glove fit for its 1990s setting.
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Over the Years
Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter • Documentary • 2015 • 186 minutes
An observation of what happens to a few manual laborers over a period of 10 years. A film about the process of becoming unemployed, told from the perspective of people who know. It represents a memorial to industrial sectors in t...
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Plan 75
Directed by Chie Hayakawa • Drama • With Chieko Baishô, Hayato Isomura • 2022 • 113 minutes
In a near dystopian future, Japan’s government launches PLAN 75, a program encouraging the elderly to terminate their own lives to relieve its rapidly aging population’s social and economic burdens. In Ch...
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Pripyat
Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter • Documentary • 1999 • 100 minutes
After the nuclear catastrophe in 1986, a 30 km restricted zone was erected around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and 116,000 persons were evacuated from this area. Pripyat is a portrait of the people who still live and work t...
