Kaili Blues
Bi Gan
2015
113 minutes
Description
An audacious, richly imagined feature debut that has collected prizes around the world, Kaili Blues heralds the arrival of a major new filmmaker. Chen, a preoccupied doctor working in a small clinic in the rain-drenched city of Kaili, decides to fulfill his late mother’s wish and sets off on a journey to look for his brother’s abandoned child. His partner in the clinic, a lonely old lady, asks him to also find her former lover, giving him a photograph, a shirt, and a music cassette. On the way, Chen passes through a mysterious town where distinctions between past, present, and future appear to slip away.
Reviews
“Astonishing first film about a geography of the soul. Delineated by time, trains and regret… Contains a 40 minute single shot that traces a map of Kaili with poetic prodigious filmic chops. Why? Cinema. Why? Life.”
— Guillermo del Toro
“A tour de force. The most elusive and the most memorable new movie that I’ve seen in quite some time…. manages to evoke Resnais, Tarkovsky, Hou Hsiao-hsien.”
— J. Hoberman, The New York Review of Books
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