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Best Director

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Best Director

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Country/Region: China Mainland

Release Year: 2019

Publish Date: 12 March 2022 00:00:00 UTC

Story:

Zhang and Shanni are a couple with successful business in Beijing. Zhang is a director of some renown from Shanxi, whose film just won a prize abroad. Shanni is a fashion magazine photographer from Guangdong. They planned to get a marriage certificate in hometown and start a wedding trip, but it was opposed by their families. They were forced to hold a traditional wedding. While preparing for the wedding, neighbors in Zhangzhang’s hometown take him for a famous director, and use their proximity to try to obtain various advantages. Meanwhile, both families have to cope with seemingly endless conflicts caused by cultural differences between north and south China. This series of struggles over values, lifestyle, and family rituals quickly transforms into an absurd farce.

Casts & Crews:

Zhang Xian
Directors

Runtime: 93 minutes

Language:

Subtitles: English

iMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11090894

Douban: https://movie.douban.com/subject/34825937/

Festivals & Awards:
2019 Pingyao International Film Festival, China

Tags: family, comedy, marriage

Director‘s Statement:
Many in our generation have experienced a move to the big city from the small cities and towns where we grew up, and the ways that our new ideas lead to a distance from or conflict with the understandings we brought from our hometowns. Weddings have become one of the key points of ignition for this kind of value struggle. In many normal people’s weddings, never-ending cultural differences and disputes over values result in a ceremony that, in the end, lacks any sense of beauty. Last year, I also organized a wedding, and the whole thing felt very much like a drama to me. The protagonist of this film, Zhangzhang, brings the film the perspective of a modern youth, as he returns to his hometown to face off with the older generation in his village, his friends and former classmates, and a series of stories of “hometown fierceness” begin to unfold. In terms of the imagery in the film, about 90% is shot in black and white, and only the last portion was shot in color, creating a strong contrast between two entirely different worlds. The majority of the actors were recruited from the hometown neighborhoods, and this was the first time for them in front of the camera. This lends a strong sense of authenticity to their portrayal of popular customs. Similarly, the conflicts and contradictions that appear in the film are the same as those that many Chinese families face regularly — the kind of problems arising with life in changing times that are difficult for anyone to resolve.