Winner of the Best Emerging Director and Best First Feature at Locarno International Film Festival, Bi Gan‘s Chinese drama Kaili Blues will finally land in U.S. theaters next month thanks to the newly launched Grasshopper Films. Telling the story of a doctor’s journey to find his brother’s abandoned child, it’s been praised for its beautiful cinematography and one can get a glimpse with a new U.S. trailer.
We said in our review from New Directors/New Films this year, “Like Kelly Reichardt or Tsai Ming-Liang, Bi finds a majestic intimacy and wonder in stillness. The camera will often languorously pan in a room, only to settle and observe some small action (e.g. women pouring boiling tea into a small kettle), or, in the most casually surrealistic moment, a projection of an upside-down train that appears to crash through a small apartment like Lumière in miniature. Even in these moments, though, the camera is mostly steady, taking it in as a rarefied reality.”
Check out the trailer below.
Country doctor Chen Sheng sets out on a train journey to search for his brother’s abandoned child, only to find himself in a dreamlike world where the boundaries between past, present, and future—and between fantasy and reality—are porous. This remarkable visual achievement, which feels as singular and alien as the films of the great Apichatpong Weerasethakul, was shot in the mining village Kaili, the director’s birthplace, and incorporates poetry he has been writing since he was a teenager.
Kaili Blues will begin screening at NYC’s Metrograph starting on May 20th and will expand in the following weeks.