There’s a beautiful scene in Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World in which the protagonist, Tao, crosses paths with an industrial worker nicknamed Little Sister on the rooftop of an unfinished building. They chat aimlessly beneath towering spires of exposed rebar until a massive plane soars overhead, drowning out their voices. “Tao, who flies on those planes?” he asks, to which she responds, “Who knows…I don’t know anybody who’s ever been on a plane.”
It’s this precise contrast of stasis and flux, of the sublime and the quotidian, of simple personal dreams swallowed up by massive national ambitions, that characterizes Liu Jian’s newest feature, Art College 1994. Jia also lends his voice to one of its characters: Gu Yongqing, a “roving artist abroad” who speaks of “the mysterious power of art” during a visiting lecture at the titular art college. This is Liu’s third animated feature film,...
It’s this precise contrast of stasis and flux, of the sublime and the quotidian, of simple personal dreams swallowed up by massive national ambitions, that characterizes Liu Jian’s newest feature, Art College 1994. Jia also lends his voice to one of its characters: Gu Yongqing, a “roving artist abroad” who speaks of “the mysterious power of art” during a visiting lecture at the titular art college. This is Liu’s third animated feature film,...
- 4/21/2024
- by Ryan Coleman
- Slant Magazine
The “Best is Yet to Come” is based on the life of Han Fudong, a young journalist who exposed the fact that the social stigma against people suffering from hepatitis B in China was actually indoctrinated in the system. Considering that the sickness is endemic in China, and that in 2003 around 100 million people had it, the story resulted in a scandal which also made its author a kind of a star reporter in the country. The movie however, focuses more on his story up to that point.
“The Best is Yet to Come” is screening at Asian Pop Up Cinema
In that fashion, it begins by showing Han Dong, the protagonist, a high school dropout, trying to get an interview at a newspaper in a job fair, but being completely neglected due to his lack of credentials and experience. The life of both him and his girlfriend, Xiao Zhu, is...
“The Best is Yet to Come” is screening at Asian Pop Up Cinema
In that fashion, it begins by showing Han Dong, the protagonist, a high school dropout, trying to get an interview at a newspaper in a job fair, but being completely neglected due to his lack of credentials and experience. The life of both him and his girlfriend, Xiao Zhu, is...
- 9/29/2023
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
‘Love Is A Gun’ set to play in competition in Critics’ Week at Venice.
Chinese sales agent Parallax Films has boarded actor Lee Hong-Chi’s directorial debut Love Is A Gun, ahead of its premiere at Venice, and Liang Ming’s Carefree Days, the opening film of San Sebastian’s New Directors strand.
Love Is A Gun, also starring and written by Lee, follows a young man who is determined to start afresh after getting out of jail, but his turbulent past comes back to haunt him, including a gun of which he cannot get rid.
It will premiere in...
Chinese sales agent Parallax Films has boarded actor Lee Hong-Chi’s directorial debut Love Is A Gun, ahead of its premiere at Venice, and Liang Ming’s Carefree Days, the opening film of San Sebastian’s New Directors strand.
Love Is A Gun, also starring and written by Lee, follows a young man who is determined to start afresh after getting out of jail, but his turbulent past comes back to haunt him, including a gun of which he cannot get rid.
It will premiere in...
- 8/11/2023
- by Silvia Wong
- ScreenDaily
The 25th edition marks a return in-person after being cancelled last year.
Han Yan’s Love Never Ends is set to open the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff), which has also revealed the nominations for its Golden Goblet Awards.
The romance drama is adapted from a cartoon of the same name created by Kang Full. Ni Dahong, Kara Wai, Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Cecilia Yip play two elderly couples who show it is never too late to love.
Director Han previously directed 2015’s Go Away Mr. Tumor and 2020’s A Little Red Flower. Love Never Ends is set for...
Han Yan’s Love Never Ends is set to open the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff), which has also revealed the nominations for its Golden Goblet Awards.
The romance drama is adapted from a cartoon of the same name created by Kang Full. Ni Dahong, Kara Wai, Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Cecilia Yip play two elderly couples who show it is never too late to love.
Director Han previously directed 2015’s Go Away Mr. Tumor and 2020’s A Little Red Flower. Love Never Ends is set for...
- 5/30/2023
- by Silvia Wong
- ScreenDaily
China, 2003. Society is restless with excitement; everyone is eager to prove themselves. The Internet has yet to take over. Newspaper is king. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed journalism intern Han Dong (Bai Ke) decides to change the fate of 100 million people with a single article. This film is inspired by true events. (Source: Venice International Film Festival 2020)
The movie premiered at the 77th Venice International Film Festival on September 8, 2020. It is finally scheduled for a theatrical release in China on March 24, 2023.
Check the film review
77th Venice Film Review: The Best is Yet to Come (2020) by Wang Jing...
The movie premiered at the 77th Venice International Film Festival on September 8, 2020. It is finally scheduled for a theatrical release in China on March 24, 2023.
Check the film review
77th Venice Film Review: The Best is Yet to Come (2020) by Wang Jing...
- 3/25/2023
- by Suzie Cho
- AsianMoviePulse
The quote that opens Chinese director Liu Jian’s shaggy but amiable new animated feature is instructive. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” is a passage from James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and indeed, Liu was himself at art college as a young man in the early ’90s, when and where “Art College 1994” is, unsurprisingly, set. The quasi-memoir feel to the movie does have its charm — it’s always a kick to see animation techniques applied not to extravagant flights of fancy but to slices of real, ordinary life — but it’s also its chief flaw. In re-creating life out of life, Liu is quite successful; whether he makes it into drama is another question. Like its characters, “Art College 1994” gives the impression of having just too much time on its hands.
Liu...
Liu...
- 2/25/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Art College 1994, a deadpan slice of comic-sad social realism from Chinese animator Liu Jian (Have a Nice Day), offers reassuring evidence that although cultural specificities can shape artistic traditions — and fashion and tastes fluctuate — art students are basically all the same and always have been: slovenly, idealistic, and prone to pretentious waffle, especially when lubricated with alcohol. But also, at least based on the evidence of the characters here, reasonably endearing with their guileless dreams of making meaningful work in a world where it sometimes feels like everything has been done. Mind you, others just want to meet romantic partners, make money somehow and maybe go abroad someday.
There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances,...
There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space for itself somewhere in the region of Eric Rohmer wistful romances,...
- 2/24/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Drama stars Hu Ge, from Diao Yinan’s 2019 Cannes Competition title ’The Wild Goose Lake’.
Beijing-based Rediance has acquired worldwide rights to Chinese director Liu Jiayin’s All Ears, a drama starring Hu Ge and executive produced by award-winning filmmaker Cao Baoping.
Rediance will launch sales on the feature at the European Film Market (EFM) this week.
Hu, from Diao Yinan’s 2019 Cannes Competition title The Wild Goose Lake, plays a mediocre screenwriter who turns to writing eulogies to make ends meet. As he listens to the life stories of the ordinary deceased people from their families, he finds a new footing in life.
Beijing-based Rediance has acquired worldwide rights to Chinese director Liu Jiayin’s All Ears, a drama starring Hu Ge and executive produced by award-winning filmmaker Cao Baoping.
Rediance will launch sales on the feature at the European Film Market (EFM) this week.
Hu, from Diao Yinan’s 2019 Cannes Competition title The Wild Goose Lake, plays a mediocre screenwriter who turns to writing eulogies to make ends meet. As he listens to the life stories of the ordinary deceased people from their families, he finds a new footing in life.
- 2/16/2023
- by Silvia Wong
- ScreenDaily
In Jing Wang’s debut feature film “The Best is Yet to Come”, Jia Zhangke isn’t only listed as the producer, he also slips in one of the episode roles, playing a ruthless, coal-mine owner who puts the families of the people deceased in an accident into their “right place”.
But the film actually addresses the laws dating back from the turn of the millennium, which had a heavy impact on 100 million people in the country. Not new or nearly outdated in many countries that still levitate between dictatorship and democracy, “The Best is Yet to Come” takes on the phenomena of the “healthy nation” that outcasts its vulnerable citizens impacted by infectious diseases, in this concrete case by Hepatitis B.
The film is based on true events that shook the Chinese society when a young amateur journalist Han Fudong (Bai-Ke) uncovered the discriminatory campaign against the carriers to...
But the film actually addresses the laws dating back from the turn of the millennium, which had a heavy impact on 100 million people in the country. Not new or nearly outdated in many countries that still levitate between dictatorship and democracy, “The Best is Yet to Come” takes on the phenomena of the “healthy nation” that outcasts its vulnerable citizens impacted by infectious diseases, in this concrete case by Hepatitis B.
The film is based on true events that shook the Chinese society when a young amateur journalist Han Fudong (Bai-Ke) uncovered the discriminatory campaign against the carriers to...
- 10/1/2020
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
‘The Best Is Yet to Come’ Is A Messy, But Affecting Look At Post-Pandemic Journalism [Venice Review]
Mining the well-worn tropes of the crusading journalist, Jing Wang’s “The Best is Yet to Come” is an investigatory look at Beijing in the aftermath of the Sars epidemic. Taking place in 2003, the film follows aspiring journalist Han Dong (Bai-Ke), as he hustles his way into an internship at the prestigious Jingcheng Daily and eventually lands on a possible front-page story, before being torn between his loyalty between journalistic ethics and a friend whose future might be jeopardized by Dong’s reporting.
Read More: 2020 Venice Film Festival Preview: All The Must-See Films To Watch
While scattershot in its narrative approach (it takes over an hour before the actual plot clarifies), Jing’s feature debut is an affecting dive into the post-pandemic anxiety that swelled through Beijing, as Dong stumbles upon a bombshell story of Hepatitis B patients paying for forged medical records in order to land jobs in a...
Read More: 2020 Venice Film Festival Preview: All The Must-See Films To Watch
While scattershot in its narrative approach (it takes over an hour before the actual plot clarifies), Jing’s feature debut is an affecting dive into the post-pandemic anxiety that swelled through Beijing, as Dong stumbles upon a bombshell story of Hepatitis B patients paying for forged medical records in order to land jobs in a...
- 9/10/2020
- by Christian Gallichio
- The Playlist
A film about an infection and the upset, paranoia, and unease that follows is, well, tailor-made for right now. There is no better time, then, to see director Jin Wang’s The Best Is Yet to Come, a selection at both the 2020 Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. It is a complex study of the illegal blood trade that helped hepatitis B carriers circumvent the discrimination they faced when seeking jobs and applying for school in early-2000s Beijing. While there is not a direct correlation to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is impossible not to make connections between both the story itself and even its creation. As Wang explains in the film’s press notes, “Due to the pandemic, post-production took place online. The editor and I were 1300km apart. Distance sparks reflection.”
The Best Is Yet to Come is the feature directorial debut from Wang, who...
The Best Is Yet to Come is the feature directorial debut from Wang, who...
- 9/10/2020
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
"Our duty is to report the facts accurately." A festival promo trailer has debuted for a Chinese indie drama titled The Best Is Yet To Come, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Jing Wang. This is premiering at the Venice Film Festival this month, then will play at the Toronto Film Festival. Set in Beijing in 2003. Society is restless with excitement; everyone is eager to prove themselves. The internet has yet to take over. Newspaper is king. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed journalism intern Han Dong decides to change the fate of 100 million people with a single article. This film is inspired by true events. Jing Wang worked as an assistant director for Jia Zhangke for years, who states that "[Jing Wang's] perspective on the world is determined and twofold: the change of the world depends on the efforts of every individual, and the vitality of cinema lies in the continuation of consciousness.
- 9/8/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
A young Chinese journalist battles corruption, state power, and his own conscience in The Best is Yet to Come, the debut feature from Chinese director Jing Wang.
The drama, which premieres in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, before moving on to Toronto’s Discovery sidebar, is set in 2003 in the aftermath of the Sars epidemic in China. 26-year-old middle school dropout and cub investigative reporter Han Dong (Bai-Ke) discovers evidence of medical fraud connected to the crisis. Publishing the story will win him a permanent job at his paper, but could have nasty repercussions for ...
The drama, which premieres in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, before moving on to Toronto’s Discovery sidebar, is set in 2003 in the aftermath of the Sars epidemic in China. 26-year-old middle school dropout and cub investigative reporter Han Dong (Bai-Ke) discovers evidence of medical fraud connected to the crisis. Publishing the story will win him a permanent job at his paper, but could have nasty repercussions for ...
Project is the first non-documentary film to shoot under the UK-China co-pro treaty.
Special Couple, the first non-documentary feature to be produced under the UK-China co-production treaty, has wrapped principal photography in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The film, a romantic comedy in both Mandarin and English, is co-produced by UK-based Zephyr Films and Chinese production companies Dimension Films and the Shanghai Media Group.
Starring Chinese actors Aarif Rahman and Bai-Ke and the UK’s Rupert Graves, Special Couple tells the story of two childhood friends from China who relocate to live in London. Following an unfortunate incident which results in one of them facing deportation,...
Special Couple, the first non-documentary feature to be produced under the UK-China co-production treaty, has wrapped principal photography in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The film, a romantic comedy in both Mandarin and English, is co-produced by UK-based Zephyr Films and Chinese production companies Dimension Films and the Shanghai Media Group.
Starring Chinese actors Aarif Rahman and Bai-Ke and the UK’s Rupert Graves, Special Couple tells the story of two childhood friends from China who relocate to live in London. Following an unfortunate incident which results in one of them facing deportation,...
- 5/30/2018
- by Tom Grater
- ScreenDaily
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