World Premiere
Against the Flow
International Narrative Competition
Feature Narrative | France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Sweden | 80 MINUTES | Mandarin Chinese | English subtitlesAsian/Asian American, Drama
Dayao and his pregnant wife, Tiantian, live in the countryside but work themselves to the bone in the city. Tiantian prefers the city, but Dayao prefers the tranquility of nature. When Dayao is seriously injured at a construction site, Tiantian must make major decisions about what’s best for them and their unborn baby.
Dayao and Tiantian are a young couple navigating the tension between their two worlds. He works construction in a large eastern Chinese city; she cooks in a school cafeteria. Each night they return from the city to the countryside farm where they live with Dayao's elderly mother, Gueihua. When Tiantian befriends Xiaoying, a local girl who shows her the possibilities of urban life, she becomes single-minded: She and Dayao must save every yuan to buy a flat in the city. This decision leaves a lot of weight on Dayao's shoulders — a man who is happiest out in nature, doing nothing. When a workplace accident leaves Dayao's body miraculously unscathed but his mind reduced to the state of a young child, the life Tiantian had been so determined to build must be reimagined entirely.
Dayao and Tiantian are a young couple navigating the tension between their two worlds. He works construction in a large eastern Chinese city; she cooks in a school cafeteria. Each night they return from the city to the countryside farm where they live with Dayao's elderly mother, Gueihua. When Tiantian befriends Xiaoying, a local girl who shows her the possibilities of urban life, she becomes single-minded: She and Dayao must save every yuan to buy a flat in the city. This decision leaves a lot of weight on Dayao's shoulders — a man who is happiest out in nature, doing nothing. When a workplace accident leaves Dayao's body miraculously unscathed but his mind reduced to the state of a young child, the life Tiantian had been so determined to build must be reimagined entirely.
Against the Flow, the feature debut from writer-director Tao Zhang, is a formally rigorous, beautifully lensed film that is a genuinely unique announcement of a filmmaker to watch. At once a portrait of marriage and ambition, as well as a meditation on the pursuit of one’s own happiness and the cost of modernity, the film is as clear-eyed as it is tender, and one that finds in its quietly devastating premise an unexpected beauty and grace.—Jason Gutierrez
Cast & Credits
Producer
Vincent Wang
Writer
Jérémie Dubois
John Doe
Costume Designer
Ruomeng Gao
Production Designer
Le Ge
Editor
Carlo Francisco Manatad
Sound
Bruno Ehlinger
Cinematographer
Rui Poças
Cast
Weihao Xu
Xingchen Lü
Shilan Chen
Catherine Fang
Will Zhang
Contacts
International Sales
US Sales
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Press Contact
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Sun June 07 - 2:30 PM
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Tue June 09 - 6:30 PM
AMC 19th St. East 6
Fri June 12 - 8:00 PM
AMC 19th St. East 6
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