These are eight films you shouldn’t miss at the Odyssey: a Chinese Cinema Season which will take place from May 10 until June 10, 2022 online. The festival will also feature 10 panel discussions and many Q&A sessions.

– Films Selected –

Feng Qin and Ren Wu had known each other online for many years, but they had never met in real life. In the summer of 2015, they made an appointment to meet in the Mountain of Yantai in Shandong province. So Qin went there alone, waiting for Wu all night in vain. It turned out that Wu disappeared mysteriously. Qin was so absent-minded that she fell into the sea. Luckily, she was rescued by someone. Several years later, Qin commenced a tour from Dandong, Liaoning province, to the south along the coast, suffering from the tide and waves, but she kept thinking of Wu all the time.It was the summer in 2019, when Qin arrived in Bo’ao Town, on Hainan Island. She accidentally found a coastal café, named “Old House “, where every afternoon some old movies would be played. She was surprised to find that these films seem to be connected with Wu. At the same time, Qin noticed Lei Chen, the coffee shop waitress, because Chen was the one who formulated the screening program and had some seemingly strange relations with Wu. While they became familiar with each other in the process of sounding out, a drama crew emerged in the “Old House “. Qin happened to be the actor by chance in a repertoire, which would remind her of the innermost secrets … (Odyssey 2022)

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One family’s destiny unravels according to the rhythms of nature, the changing seasons, the life of a river…

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Great Happiness is an ensemble film centering on three good friends who have grown up together in Xining, the capital of Qinghai province. They have their own visions of a bright future within this ever-expanding city. Belonging to the generation born at the time of the one-child policy, the three young men are confronted with triple challenges: the frustrations of pursuing personal ambitions, the burden of supporting a large family, and the overpowering presence of social expectation. (Odyssey 2022)

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Three generations of women in modern China. Guo, an investigative journalist trying to write under difficult circumstances, still living in her family home. Her daughter, on the cusp of adolescence. And her mother, who makes up for life’s hardship in her autumn years, is always ready to criticise her adult daughter and her life choices.

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While the first reports of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan are heard on the news, 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. (Odyssey 2022)

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Liu Lu is leading a dreary and seemingly mundane life, working at a deer breeding farm. A friend, Ma Hai, keeps trying in vain to win her affections. It’s as if she’s isolating and banishing herself from any kind of human warmth or love. Ma Hai confesses he knows another Liu Lu and another himself in a ‘parallel world’. The more she learns about the other ‘her’, the more Liu Lu discovers about the long suppressed memories from her past. (Odyssey 2022)

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Gelak is an illegitimate child living with her mother Samdan in a remote Tibetan village, where women are not allowed to join the Sang Offering to the Sacred Mountain. Samdan has always relied on men for a living, and Gelak has been treated as a vicious witch by the villagers. Fed up with the prejudice she has to face , Gelak decides to challenge the village’s traditions and fight for herself …

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Xi Gu is about to lose her job because of her undocumented citizenship status. While using all her social connections to get official registration papers, she also faces another challenge: getting along with her brother’s new girlfriend, Qingchang.

As winter sets in and temperatures plunge, the relationship between Xi, her brother Liang, and his girlfriend becomes increasingly unclear, threatening to freeze over itself. Meanwhile, more trouble brews as a dead body is found floating in the sea, and a mysterious tape repeatedly brings Xi to flit back and forth across the boundary of youth and adulthood. What she doesn’t know is that she is about to lose everything. (Odyssey 2022)

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For more information, please visit: https://www.odysseychinesecinema.uk/