La Fonte

40-year-old housewife Cai has lost track of who she is and who she wants to be. During one of her daughter’s basketball matches, she inadvertently injures an elderly woman. This seemingly trivial event is a catalyst for a life spinning out of control, as past events resurface while she moves into an unknown future. Director Qiu Yang follows a series of multi-awarded shorts with his debut feature, a mesmerizing and intimate drama about a woman forced to confront the wreckage of her life and her longing for change?

In a small county in Shandong Province in 2008, single mother Wei lives alone with her daughter Miao. A mother's desperate efforts to get her daughter into China's top universities through "college entrance exam immigration" change both of their destinies. However, this has put them into an even more precarious situation than when they started.

At a Japanese restaurant nestled within the busy streets of Beijing, Li Dong convinces his older brother Li Chun to travel together to the Japanese city of Yanagawa to find and catch up with their childhood sweetheart Liu Chuan.

A late summer typhoon looms as Ting's wedding approaches. Urged on by her mother, Ting sets out from Guangzhou to Hong Kong to look for her father who has been absent for 20 years. On her trip, Ting's vague memories from the past come back to her. An unexpected encounter leads Ting to find out the truth of her family. She gets in touch with an old friend, Yuseng. They spend a night together at Yuseng's place, both feeling as if they were in a dream, searching for the lost time.

On a 1980s evening, the topmost clown-actor of the 20th century Sichuan opera, Qiu Fu passes away in an accident and half-unwillingly sets off for the Ghost City under the escort of two underworld officials. Along the way, he meets old friends. As they recall the past, a history of the living is conjured up.

Gu Wentong, a middle-aged food critic, is drifting through the local eateries of vibrant Beijing with his younger photographer colleague Oyang. A divorcé with a 6-year-old daughter and estranged from his father for decades, he is looking for a new perspective on life while reconsidering his failings as a father, a son, and a lover. While the seasons come and go, people get together and move apart. Only one thing will remain the same: The White Pagoda where they all meet sooner or later.

On an urban island in Shanghai, Yoyo starts secretly following Lan Tian. In a parallel world, Lan Tian is quietly observing Yoyo in the distance. Trapped in a twin-towered shopping complex, they experience two variations of encounters, as affections, desires and other feelings start to appear.

This is a story about how people and animals finally get along. A snow leopard breaks into the sheep pen of a nomad and kills nine rams. Father and son then argue: the son insists on killing the snow leopard, but the father insists on releasing it.

Amid the wintry steppes, Saina, a Mongolian horseman turned cultural performer, tends his ranch during the day and performs horseback tricks for audiences at night. Unlike the majestic cavalryman he portrays in the show, Saina discovers that his herdsman’s life is on the verge of disintegration.

Mengtai Zhang locks us into his own memories of a center for internet addicts. Run by psychiatrists, who are backed up in some centers by military personnel, this institution functions as a re-education camp.