Stonewalling
New York Times Critics' Picks
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2h 27m
Directed by Ji Huang, Ryûji Otsuka • Drama • With Honggui Yao • 2022 • 148 minutes
20 year-old Lynn is told she needs English classes, flight attendant school, and a go getter-attitude. She perseveres along this path of upward mobility until she finds out she’s pregnant. Indecisive and running out of time, she tells her boyfriend she’s had an abortion and instead returns to her feuding parents and their failing clinic to try and figure out (if she can) what’s next.
Built from interviews with college women happy to invest in themselves, observations of a post-Tik Tok China, and their own lived experiences, STONEWALLING is perceptive with meticulous attention to detail. Returning with a now adult Yao Honggui (FOOLISH BIRD, EGG AND STONE) opposite the directors’ own parents, husband-and-wife team Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka take a look at the new norms of gig-economy, grey markets, MLMs, and hustling in modern-day metropolitan China through the experiences of one ordinary young woman.
"Few movies capture the surreal comedy and engulfing horror of the money-driven world as piercingly as Stonewalling. A cool, quietly brilliant heartbreaker." —The New York Times
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