We’re excited to continue FLC Luminaries, our video series that spotlights talent at all levels of the filmmaking process who uplift the art and craft of cinema. Our series continues with Jia Zhangke, presented in partnership with ROLEX, discussing his boldest approach to narrative yet–a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences.

A Main Slate selection of NYFF62, Caught by the Tides is now playing at FLC. Get tickets!

The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous Caught by the Tides. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences—Caught by the Tides is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story. The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change: of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.