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Caught by the Tides film image; woman touches a life-size robot

Caught by the Tides

Feng Liu Yi Dai / 风流一代

Showcase

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Two decades of China’s rapid transformations are on dazzling display in Caught by the Tides, master filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s magisterial latest feature. In the early 2000s, lovers Qiaoqiao and Bin bide their time in a ragtag song-and-dance troupe in the city of Datong. When Bin leaves town and Qiaoqiao goes in search of him, however, the two are swept up in the long drift of the twenty-first century. What ensues is a quietly devastating, decades-spanning romance of two individuals borne along by the forces of time and tide.

Featuring not just callbacks to earlier films, such as Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life (2006), but also contemporaneously shot footage from those productions, Caught traces an alternate path through Jia’s era-defining filmography—one that doubles as a counter-history of contemporary China itself. Anchored by a luminous performance by Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime partner and artistic collaborator, the film derives its considerable power from the cumulative sense of time gone by.

 

Media Partner

     

Director
Cast

Zhao Tao, Li Zhubin

Credits
Country of Origin

China

Year

2024

Language

In Mandarin with English subtitles

Film Contact
18+

At International Village and Vancouver Playhouse

19+

At Fifth Avenue

111 min
Cinemas of Asia Drama Legendary Filmmakers Romance
X Stream Pictures, Momo Pictures, Huanxi Media Group Limited, Wishart Media

Book Tickets

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Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Jia Zhangke, Tang Yan, Dong Ping, Zhu Weijie

Producer

Casper Liang Jiayan, Shozo Ichiyama

Screenwriter

Jia Zhangke, Wan Jiahuan

Cinematography

Yu Lik-Wai, Eric Gautier

Editor

Yang Chao, Lin Xudong, Matthieu Laclau

Original Music

Lim Giong

Art Director

Ye Qiusen, Liu Qiang, Liu Weixin, Liang Jingdong

Jia Zhang-Ke headshot; Caught by the Tides director

Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke was born in Fenyang, Shanxi, in 1970 and graduated from Beijing Film Academy. His debut feature Xiao Wu (1997) won prizes in Berlin, Vancouver, and elsewhere. Since then, his films have routinely premiered at major European festivals. Still Life (2006) won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2006, and A Touch of Sin (2013) won the Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2013.

Filmography: Pickpocket (1997); Platform (2000); Still Life (2006); Mountains May Depart (2015); Ash Is Purest White (2018)

Photo by X Stream Pictures

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