MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART

Fenyang, Jia Zhangke’s home town, 1999: the singer Tao stands between two childhood friends, the miner Liangzi and the up-and-coming businessman Jinsheng. She chooses Jinsheng, and Liangzi leaves town. By 2014, Tao is divorced and runs a petrol station; Jinsheng lives as an investor in Shanghai and wants to emigrate to Australia with their son, who is named Dollar; Liangzi returns from the mines gravely ill. By 2025, Dollar is growing up in Australia, barely speaks Chinese any more and knows almost nothing about his mother. “Mountains May Depart” (Shan he gu ren, China 2015) by Jia Zhangke tells a quarter-century in one family.

Three time frames, three aspect ratios that widen with each leap forward: Jia shows China’s transformation since the turn of the millennium through what it does to the people who stay behind and those who leave. It premiered in competition at Cannes in 2015; Audience Award at the Golden Horse Awards. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2015.

Shown at the 2015 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2015 · Film Archive