Li Wen at East Lake

North American Premiere | Q&A with Luo Li

Luo Li’s follow-up to Emperor Visits the Hell (New Directors/New Films 2013) is arguably the finest work to date from one of the most distinctive voices in modern Chinese cinema: a portrait of Wuhan’s East Lake that quickly evolves into a detective story—or does it? The title character is a cop who’s tracking a vaguely suspicious figure around the lake, but his rambling trajectory turns out to be, if anything, an excuse for Li to spend time with the area’s residents and regulars. Li Wen at East Lake ultimately becomes a grim, darkly comic picture of a modern China that makes a criminal offense of freedom of thought and being on the outside.