Suzhou River

On the shores of Suzhou river in Shanghai, Mardar travels through the city delivering packages in his motorbike. In one of his deliveries he meets a young woman called Moudan and they both fall in love, but Mardar was actually hired to kidnap her and blackmail his father. After spending three years in prison, Mardar goes back to Suzhou river and he meets Meimei, a young dancer who looks a lot like Moudan.

Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye, often censored by the regime in his country, is one of the big talents of his generation. 'Suzhou River' is a classic of the contemporary Chinese cult cinema, now restored in 4K and presented in the Berlin Festival. Often defined like the 'Vertigo' that could have been filmed by Wong Kay Way, it was originally released in the year 2000 in the Rotterdam Festival, where it won the biggest prize. The filmmaker exhibits a torrent of visual and narrative resources that present a dreamlike story about love and longing, a mix between reality and dream that follows the flow of Suzhou river.

Lou's cinema is very diverse, including 'Summer Palace' (2006) and 'Spring Fever' (2009), in which political and sexual liberty go hand in hand, and the historical dramas 'Purple Butterfly' (2003) and 'Saturday Fiction' (2019), set in the Japanese occupied Shanghai. The cast of 'Sizhou River' includes Zhou Xun, Jia Hongsheng, Nai An, Yao Anlian and Hua Zhongkai.