“Cry Me a River” Dir. Jia Zhang Ke (China)

2008, 19 min.

Synopsis:

This film is an elegy to the youth of the whole generation born in the 1970s …Ten years after graduation, four collage classmates who live far apart are reunited. (Old lovers played by Guo Xio Dong and Zhao Tao; Wang Wei and Hao Lei.) They have not drifted apart with the passage of time, nor do they feel so. New arguments begin on the same topics they argued about 10 yeas ago. With the past still lingering on their minds, they didn’t feel courageous enough to pick up the pieces of their shattered love. Despite cherishing those feelings, they knew it was their fate to be apart. Like the silent but turbulent rivers that wind through and around Suzhou, they held on tightly to their secrets. – from pressbook

 

Director: Jia Zhang-Ke

Jia Zhang-Ke was born in 1970 in Fenyang, in the Shanxi Providence of China. He graduated from Beijing Film Academy and made his first feature film Xiao Wu in 1998.

He is regarded as a leading figure of the “Six generation” movement of Chinese cinema. Jia’s films have received critical praise and have been recognized internationally, notably winning the Venice Film Festival’s top award for “Still Life.” A Retrospective at The Modern Art Museum in New York (2010).

He has been described by critics and film directors as being perhaps “the most important filmmaker working in the world today.”