Film Forum

In this enthralling, poignant docufiction, director Lou Ye (SUZHOU RIVER) and his crew reunite in Wuhan in January 2020 to complete a film started a decade earlier. When the first wave of Covid precipitates lockdown and fear, this story of revived artistic vision pivots to a thriller-paced account of the early spread of the virus — both the devastation and the deep connections borne of shared isolation. Using outtakes and on-set footage from RIVER and other films (SPRING FEVER, MYSTERY, THE SHADOW PLAY), and casting real actors from these films to play themselves, Lou creates an intense yet playful catharsis for filmmakers, artists, and, ultimately, all of us — a chance to revisit that time, and to heal.

Presented with support from The Reginald S. Reinhardt, Ling-Makekau Fund for Asia-Pacific Films

2024     105 MIN.     SINGAPORE / GERMANY     FILM MOVEMENT
IN MANDARIN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“AN UNFINISHED FILM runs the emotional gamut, with a pulsing naturalism that few films about the recent pandemic (or any real disasters) have ever managed to achieve.”
– Siddhant Adlakha, Variety

“Lou Ye’s supple, intriguing return to the sort of challenging filmmaking that first put him on the international radar with SUZHOU RIVER (2000)…An impressive, impressionistic attempt to capture the strangeness of those early days [of COVID] from a Chinese perspective. But it also reminds us that the new normal is not the same as the old normal, in all sorts of ways: from the effect the pandemic had on our psyches, emotional lives and work-life balance to the kind of stories the world is watching today, and the kind of screens it’s watching them on.”
– Lee Marshall, Screen