Take Off
New York Asian Film Festival 2026
July 10 - 23
Peng Fei’s sweeping, idealistic epic, which premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival, follows a stubborn Northeast Chinese worker chasing his late father’s dream of flying, from the reform era’s dance halls to one final ascent.
Showtimes
Fri, July 17
Peng Fei adapts a novel by Shuang Xuetao for his fourth feature, an epic, idealistic tale spanning the late 20th century into China’s reform era. Li Mingqi is an ordinary worker who inherits his father’s impossible dream: to build a machine and fly. An early experiment goes wrong and disables his brother-in-law, a tragedy that shadows everything after. As the country opens up, Li and his wife transform an abandoned factory space into a dance hall and float a hot-air balloon to draw curious foreigners. Still, the sky keeps calling. When his nephew falls gravely ill, Li straps on his homemade flying machine one last time. Take Off made its world premiere in the main competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
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