Still life – Polimi International Film Festival

Directed by Jia Zhangke. With Zhai Tao and Han Sanming. CHINA, 2006 – running time 108 minutes
Original language with English subtitles – free event upon registration

Last movie of the 2016/2017 series.

Jia Zhangke’s film, winner of the Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion) award at the Venice Film Festival, traces the parallel story of Han Samning, a man in search of his wife and daughter who ran away from him sixteen years before, and Shen Jong, a woman who had been abandoned by her husband two years earlier.

The tale of these two events is set in Fengjie, a town devastated by the dam project known as the Three Gorges. It deals with a mammoth construction project that the Chinese Government actually insisted on in the name of progress.

With a narrative halfway between the scientific and the surreal, and with a Master filming technique, the director manages to convey the idea of a modern society, where economic interests and technology prevail at the expense of ancient Chinese tradition, and maybe even of human feelings. So despite global economic power and progress it sets out towards the drift.

“It was a film-surprise in Venice. Only a few people saw the film and it won the Golden Lion. Well deserved: like many great filmmakers, Jia Zhang-Ke intermingles fiction with a documentary.” Fabio Ferzetti, Il Messaggero

“A modern master of postmodern discontent, Jia Zhang-ke is among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today, whom you have probably never heard of.” Manohla Dargis, The New York Times