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Tough Out

In the suburbs of Beijing, a group of troubled teenagers learn to play baseball with a famous baseball coach, while struggling through their internal conflicts and the inability to play baseball games like professionals. When an accident took place in the winter of 2017, countless local residents got evacuated in Beijing, the baseball team, as well as their playfield were facing the unexpected obstacle—the relocation of their headquarter. With the World Series of the Little Pony League waiting around the corner, the whole team will have to pull themselves together and face the competition on the international stage.

Tough Out

6.2 2020
Day Zero

Filmed over a three-year period, the film journeys across the planet seeking those on the frontline fighting to protect the world’s most precious resource from running out. It seeks to awaken and inspire audiences to change how they think about the planet’s most vital resource: water, and act, by revealing the rapidly building water crisis at both a global and human scale. The documentary includes exclusive interviews from some of the world’s top scientists and experts, travelling across continents to explore some of the most shocking and alarming water shortage issues facing our planet today. From the Cape Town water crisis and the violent impact of deforestation in the Amazon to the catastrophic results of intensive farming in the American Mid-West.

Day Zero

8.0 2020
The Empty Nest

Zhao Yimei was an "Empty Nest" old woman. Her husband betrayed her when she was young, and she drove her husband and son out of the house. Today, she has a poor relationship with her son who lives far away and suffers from urinary incontinence. She lost faith in life and intends to end her life. Lei Xiaoding, a health care product salesman who broke into her life "accidentally". His humorous, diligent, and caring brought long-lost love and warmth to Zhao Yimei. The two became increasingly harmonious and created many warm and happy memories. In return, Zhao Yimei bought many health products from Lei Xiaoding. Lei Xiaoding wanted to achieve something in big cities, but was frustrated everywhere. One day, he defrauded all of Zhao Yimei's savings together with others. Facing such a betrayal, Zhao Yimei fell into despair again.

The Empty Nest

NR 2020
One Says No

Chinese cities expand and gradually absorb the countryside. The village of Yangji was yet another victim to the expansion, which benefits local developers linked to the government. Rural residents are forced to vacate their simple dwellings and make room for new houses and entrepreneurs from the cities. The vast majority of local resistance will subside despite meager compensation and low prospects for decent housing, but Azhong is one of a handful of people who choose to fight against the corrupt system.

One Says No

NR 2020
Twilight Zone

The documentary focuses on Dai Congyang, a 20-year-old girl with congenital cataracts and semi-blindness. It shows what Dai has been confronted with and how she struggles with the conflicts about her blind boyfriend and her parents who strongly disagree with her relationship. Besides, it witnesses how she gains self-recognition and self-actualization when torn between "to stay at hometown" or "to start up in a bigger city". Back and forth between Wenzhou, Hangzhou and Taizhou, Dai finds herself trapped in a relationship seemed sweet but also full of lies and vanity. In the end, it still remains unknown as to whether Dai chooses to gamble on love or to succumb to her parents and start a new life.

Twilight Zone

NR 2020
Bad Acting

Stuffing the face with unimaginable expressions, tears streaming down the cheeks like a waterfall, hysterical cries as if coming from a neurotic….. These “phenomena” are literally the “bad acting” that are overwhelming our movies today – loud, over the top, crude, vulgar, full of ridiculed cliches that suffocate the audience….the list goes on. The illustrious Stage Opera Director and Lecturer, Olivia Yan Wing Pui, with years of distinct teaching expertise and experience, transforms her classroom into the theater. She documents her students comprising celebrated artists and newbies, award-winning actresses or laypersons, who, in Bad Acting, forthrightly share their struggles and pains, persistence and devotion, on their objective of becoming top notch artists in their acting careers.

Bad Acting

NR 2020
Like the Dyer's Hand

The legendary life of Ye Jiaying (1924-), a master of Chinese classical poetry. She went through war, political persecution, and wandering overseas all her life. She returned to China after the reform and opening up in her later years, and continued to create and inherit teaching, which was the lifeblood of classical poetry interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. The film interweaves Ye Jiaying's personal life with Chinese classical poetry for thousands of years, showing the significance track of her seeking existence in the long river of poetry. "Du Fu's Eight Episodes of Qiuxing" is the most important research masterpiece in Ye Jiaying. The eight poems of Qiuxing depict the rise and fall of China's prosperous Tang Dynasty. This film uses this as a metaphor for the turbulent years experienced by Mr. Ye, and invites musician Sato Congming to create film music based on the eight poems of Qiuxing, combining elegant music and modern music, bringing new life to Du Fu's poetry.

Like the Dyer's Hand

8.0 2020
The New World: Variations on Stay-Home Activities

In 2020, most residents on the planet were forced to live indoors for days and months due to the epidemic, which has influenced our usual work and life to some extent. In this isolation, people tend to create ways of self-entertainment and take limited exercise at home. As a result, a large amount of ordinary people emerged on the Internet and started to show the interesting bits of living indoors in their own way. They straddled the differences in time and space, and built vast webs of data in live form, in which they connected and influenced each other.

The New World: Variations on Stay-Home Activities

NR 2020
One Day

We follow a man of advanced age walking along a misty mountain path in China. In one shot he carries a bag; in others he carries sacks of rice, or timber, or large buckets of water. He’s filmed in the morning, in the evening, and at night. The seasons change as we walk with him, through the bleakness of the winter, or on a fresh spring morning. The low-key atmosphere, the subdued gray-green hues of the surroundings, and the absence of dialogue and music all lend this film a refreshingly understated feel. A space is opened up in which the viewer can listen to the sound of the wind, the man’s footsteps, the birds. There is time to wonder who the man is that we are following, where he is going, and what his life is like. Only at the end of his journey do we find out a little more about him. One Day is a minimalist take on a journey that allows the viewer room to reflect on what we do with our time.

One Day

NR 2020
Wuqiao Circus

In Wuqiao, a small Chinese town, the inhabitants are dedicated to circus. For decades, different generations have been presenting themselves as clowns, magicians, acrobats and tamers. During the holidays of Chinese New Year, the Wuqiao Acrobatic World turns into a big playground for spectators. Surrounded by Buddhist temples and Taoist sculptures, artists create their own space of circus tradition, imagination, illusion and reality. Backstage life is melancholic. "Wuqiao Circus", a film about circus life fragments, performative existence and the love for playfulness.

Wuqiao Circus

NR 2020
Rainbow Cruise

Many people lack knowledge of sexual minorities, and even hold prejudices about and discriminatory attitudes towards them. This public welfare documentary focuses on the life stories of sexual minorities. The characters are at different stages, including those who have come out, those who are married, and those who are waiting for the legalization of gay marriage to obtain certification. This film promotes knowledge of sexual minorities in society, advocates for healthy living, and helps exual minorities realize their self-identity, hoping to reduce the occurrence of social prejudice and enhance understanding, trust, and tolerance between people.

Rainbow Cruise

7.0 2020
Export My Love

In China, it is hard for a divorced or widowed woman to find a good new husband, especially for those who have kids. For thousands of years, this phenomenon has been rooted in the profound Chinese culture. Though losing something, if not all, those women are still longing for love, one of the only things that can provide warmth to them. They want to give their descendants a family with a father who can fill in the gap of fatherly love. Export My Love is a cross-continent love-seeking story between the East and West. Shot in both China and America, this documentary follows four Chinese women who try to pursue love by finding U.S. husbands. Although they've never been to the U.S. before and most of them cannot speak English, they try their best to overcome these barriers and start new lives.

Export My Love

NR 2020
The Execution of the Thinker

The film's director, Hao Jian, has spent more than ten years interviewing many of his relatives and comrades, and has filmed a large amount of material related to the life of Yu Luoke. The film uses a combination of documentary interviews and montage to document and describe his life. The filmmaker also interviews several generations of Chinese thinkers, including Liu Xiaobo, with whom he considers the ideological significance and persona of Yu Luoke in Chinese history, providing a profound reading and interpretation of Yu Luoke as a thinker, rebel and human rights pioneer from multiple perspectives.

The Execution of the Thinker

NR 2020
Southern Wind

Starting from 2020, COVID-19 infectious diseases broke out all over the country, with Wuhan in Hubei Province as the hardest hit area. On a special day with wind and snow, Chen Huiying and her family returned to their hometown in Hubei (Hongtu Township) to accompany the elderly for the Spring Festival. At this moment, many roads in Hubei Province were closed, people could not get in and out-effectively prevented and controlled the spread of this epidemic. Almost everyone in this little township were trapped here, workers therefore had no option but to stay at home. Overwhelming news of COVID-19 came from TV news and Internets. The number of infections and deaths rose sharply with all-day live broadcasting. Accompanied by fear and anxiety, repeated the usual ordinary state of life, and children seeded the only fun in the enclosed space. As days passed, everyone looked forward to having a safe environment for their families and waited to the situation of the epidemic to improve.

Southern Wind

NR 2020
His Land

Eighteen years ago, the Three Gorges Dam was in the building process. The Zhang family, who lived in the old town of Yunyang had to move elsewhere. One day, the grandfather suffered a stroke and lost his memory. The children returned to look after him. The eldest daughter even bought an apartment and new furniture for her old man. Years later, Grandpa Zhang turned better. It is time to consider how the family should go on. The topic is now focused on the eldest grandson. The relatives ought to worry about his marriage, for he is already 28 years old. Facing this urge, the grandson has then considered pretending to marry his best friend to comfort the family, while living a completely different life in Europe.

His Land

NR 2020
The Ark

While the first reports of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan are heard on the news, elsewhere in the country Zhang Xiuhua—who is suffering from a different disease—is fighting for her life. The doctors may have given up on her, but her children and grandchildren haven’t, and they’re doing everything possible to keep her with them for a little while longer. We observe the family in restrained black-and-white as they struggle with their mother’s situation, the economic consequences of the pandemic, and each other. Pride and opposing worldviews ultimately put a strain on relationships between the brothers and sisters—but they still don’t budge from their mother’s side. Events within the family remain at the forefront, but the viewer repeatedly picks up on moments from the Covid crisis and the restrictions arising from it. In this way the film subtly interweaves a private crisis with a global emergency, and shows their reciprocal effects on a human life, at both micro and macro level.

The Ark

NR 2020