Zhang Xianmin

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Four wraithlike figures of different ages and pasts, haunted by memory, drift along Nanjing's wintry riverbanks. They share an abandoned ruin where talk turns to poetry, painterly pauses, instrumental reveries and the unabashed group therapy of karaoke.

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Gu Wentong learns the whereabouts of his father, who lost contact with him more than 40 years ago. Encouraged by new friend, photographer Ouyang Wenhui, Gu Wentong decides to face his father and rebuild the long-lost father-son relationship.

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Wu is in her mid-twenties and lives with her mother in a traditional one-story house in one of Beijing’s hutongs. Both consider themselves to be writers, but success has so far eluded them. The fact that Wu is supported by a divorced, elderly man helps the women through lean periods. Their unhealthily close relationship is characterized by reproaches and quibbling; only during meals do they appear to lay down their verbal weapons. The situation escalates when both Wu and her mother hit an emotional low.

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A Chinese couple visits the daughter they gave up for adoption 30 years ago.

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Xiao-Li is a devoted housewife and an active member of her local Catholic church in the farmlands of southern China. Her faith is put to the test when her husband is hospitalized with respiratory illness caused by unsafe working conditions.

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Yu Hong leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student riots from 1989 then ensue and take a toll on their lives.

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A policeman investigates an introverted signal-station manager suspected of raping a hotel clerk.

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Tang returns to a small island formed by the accumulation of floating sand from the Yangtze River, where he runs an organic farm. All these years of work, however, have caused him to deal with difficulties and failures frequently. A mother, who lives in seclusion in the mountains, comes out of isolation to spend a few days with her daughter, Xiao Yu, who works on the same farm. She hopes that the young girl will accompany her back to her old home for the winter solstice. Under her mother's watchful eye, Xiao Yu becomes aware of traumatic issues in his life - and can no longer ignore them. Meanwhile, the farm undergoes a radical change in its operating methods. A storm is approaching that will transform them all.

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One summer night, Zhen Liu’s husband, Xiao Ping, is arrested out of the blue and cannot be reached after being dragged away by the police 30 days earlier. Liu goes to the police in search of information about her husband, but to no avail. Her husband’s sudden disappearance slowly destroys her while her relationship with her kindergarten-age daughter becomes rocky as well. She visits her husband’s friends to ask for their help, but gets only various assumptions about his arrest in return. Liu manages to bring her former boyfriend and attorney Lv Xin on board and together they search for her husband. Thanks to Lv Xin’s connections, they locate where her husband is, but the police’s unreasonably demanding requests eventually discourage her husband’s release. An unassuming examination, shown in documentary style, of a Chinese society helpless under state power.

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Liu Jincai, a taxi driver, falls in love with unemployed Wu Li. Wu Li's parents ask 20 000 yuan to Liu's family to cover their daughter's fee for nurse school in a bigger city, in exchange of a promise of marriage just after graduation. Liu's parents firmly refuse. Despaired, Liu Jincai commits suicide with poison. During Jincai's funeral, beyond his buddies, his brother Liu Jinbao swears to exterminate Wu Li's whole family. Wu's family urgently moved away, Jinbao searches downtown on a motorbike with a knife...

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