Two decades of China’s rapid transformations are on dazzling display in Caught by the Tides, master filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s magisterial latest feature. In the early 2000s, lovers Qiaoqiao and Bin bide their time in a ragtag song-and-dance troupe in the city of Datong. When Bin leaves town and Qiaoqiao goes in search of him, however, the two are swept up in the long drift of the twenty-first century. What ensues is a quietly devastating, decades-spanning romance of two individuals borne along by the forces of time and tide.
Featuring not just callbacks to earlier films, such as Unknown Pleasures (2002) and Still Life (2006), but also contemporaneously shot footage from those productions, Caught traces an alternate path through Jia’s era-defining filmography—one that doubles as a counter-history of contemporary China itself. Anchored by a luminous performance by Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime partner and artistic collaborator, the film derives its considerable power from the cumulative sense of time gone by.
Media Partner
Zhao Tao, Li Zhubin
China
2024
In Mandarin with English subtitles
At International Village and Vancouver Playhouse
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Jia Zhangke, Tang Yan, Dong Ping, Zhu Weijie
Producer
Casper Liang Jiayan, Shozo Ichiyama
Screenwriter
Jia Zhangke, Wan Jiahuan
Cinematography
Yu Lik-Wai, Eric Gautier
Editor
Yang Chao, Lin Xudong, Matthieu Laclau
Original Music
Lim Giong
Art Director
Ye Qiusen, Liu Qiang, Liu Weixin, Liang Jingdong
Jia Zhangke
Jia Zhangke was born in Fenyang, Shanxi, in 1970 and graduated from Beijing Film Academy. His debut feature Xiao Wu (1997) won prizes in Berlin, Vancouver, and elsewhere. Since then, his films have routinely premiered at major European festivals. Still Life (2006) won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2006, and A Touch of Sin (2013) won the Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2013.
Filmography: Pickpocket (1997); Platform (2000); Still Life (2006); Mountains May Depart (2015); Ash Is Purest White (2018)
Photo by X Stream Pictures
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Late Fame
Based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (Eyes Wide Shut) this is a sly, poignant comedy about vanity and art from director Kent Jones, starring Willem Dafoe as a mailman belatedly acclaimed for a book of poetry he wrote in his youth.
Memory of Princess Mumbi
In 2093, a filmmaker arrives in the African village of Umata, where he meets Princess Mumbi, a woman torn between love, legacy, and the future of storytelling. It's a fabulous genre-blending fable about memory, invention and cinematic resistance.
Lessons of Darkness
Werner Herzog's unforgettable documentary reveals the unfolding disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames in 1991 as a sweeping inferno of mesmerizing power.
Beau Travail
Inspired by Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Claire Denis' transfixing Beau Travail is set in East Africa. Sgt Galoup (Denis Lavant) reflects on his time in the French Foreign Legion, and the impact of the handsome Sentain (Gregoire Colin).
But I'm a Cheerleader
Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is the perfect All-American Girl, or so she thinks. That is until she’s shipped off to conversion therapy. This pitch black comedy is wrapped in a saccharine bow, featuring the icon herself, RuPaul, as a conversion counsellor.