One of the standout features of the 8th Pingyao International Film Festival is a restored version of Chen Kaige’s seminal film “Yellow Earth.” This movie was first released four decades ago, which played a crucial role in gaining international recognition for Chinese art-house cinema and ushered in the Fifth Generation of Chinese directors.
The festival, scheduled to take place from September 24 to 30, will kick off with the global debut of Liu Juan’s “A River Without Tears.” In its Hidden Dragons segment, showcasing Chinese films, the festival will present the Asian premieres of Ma Lanhua’s “Hello, Spring” and Tang Yongkan’s “Stars and the Moon.”
Additionally, world premieres will include Wang Lina’s “Village Music,” Zhu Xin’s “A Song River,” Yang Suiyi’s “Karst,” Luka Yang Yuanyuan’s “Chinatown Cha-Cha,” Shen Tao’s “Floating Clouds Obscure the Sun,” Siu Koon-ho’s “True Love, For Once in My Life,” Zhai Yixiang’s “Reflections in the Lake,” Zhou Quan’s “Betwixt and Between,” and Xu Lei’s “Green Wave.”
The festival’s Crouching Tigers section, dedicated to international films, features Paula Carneiro’s “Savanna and the Mountain” from Uruguay; Matthew Rankin’s critically acclaimed “Universal Language”; India Donaldson’s “Good One”; Hernan Rosselli’s “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed”; Tyler Taormina’s “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point”; Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s “Sujo”; Boris Lojkine’s “The Story of Souleymane”; Santiago Lozano Alvarez’s “I Saw Three Black Lights”; Carlo Sironi’s “My Summer With Irene”; Ramon Zuercher’s “The Sparrow in the Chimney”; and Neo Sora’s “Happyend.”
Gala screenings at the festival will feature Yonfan’s latest documentary “Crossing Years”; Patricia Mazuy’s “Visiting Hours”; Roberto Minervini’s “The Damned”; Jonas Trueba’s “The Other Way Around”; Shiori Ito’s documentary “Black Box Diaries”; Paola Cortellesi’s “There’s Still Tomorrow”; and Okuyama Hiroshi’s “My Sunshine.”
The extensive retrospective program will include classics such as Bille August’s 1987 film “Pelle the Conqueror,” Ermanno Olmi’s 1978 “The Tree of Wooden Clogs,” Satyajit Ray’s 1955 “Pather Panchali,” and Abbas Kiarostami’s 1992 “And Life Goes On.”