2020 / documentary / Chine / 112’ / Color / status : completed / Chinese / long feature-film / International collections
Prominent Chinese writers and scholars gather in a village in Shanxi, a province of China and the hometown of Jia Zhang-Ke. This starts an 18-chapter symphony about Chinese society since 1949. Narrated by three important novelists born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s respectively, telling their own stories with literature and reality, the film weaves a 70-year spiritual history of the Chinese people.
Production: XSTREAM PICTURES, HUAXIA FILM DISTRIBUTION CO., LTD., SHANXI FILM AND TELEVISION GROUP, HUAXIN KYLIN CULTURE MEDIA CO., LTD., WISHARTY MEDIA CO., LTD., HUAYI BROTHER PICTURES LIMITED
Press
“Meditative and handsomely shot.”
Wendy Ide - Screen International
“Quiet, dignified and ruminative, it gets far closer to real Chinese people.”
Deborah Young - The Hollywood Reporter
“Jia Zhangke documentary is a spiritual depiction of China. Illuminating.”
James Mottram - South China Morning Post
“A superior work … the Chinese master travels to his hometown, Fenyang, to meditate on how memory and tradition can withstand the thrust of modernizing processes.”
Periodico de Catalunya
“A fascinating portrait of writing under communism, as well offering key insights into the esteemed Chinese director himself.”
Cultured Vultures
“Swimming confirms Jia Zhang-ke as one of the most important Asian directors, always capable to interest ant stimulate.”
Andrea Chimenti - Il Sole 24 Ore
“Swimming Out till The Sea Turns Blue is a beautiful documentary by the filmmaker who has been a major chronicler of China’s transformations over the last decades.”
Terra
“The Exceptional Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke manages effortlessly to weave words and images into a dynamic idea of History.”
Der Standard
“Beautiful. A melancholic, nostalgic look at how rural China has changed from 1940s to now. It has a really caring feeling to all of it, and hearing these stories told is so delightful.”
Alex Billington - First Showing
“Swimming Out provides an informative backcloth to Chinese culture in Shanxi province, a thoughtful ethnological, cultural and socio political snapshot of this vast nation.”
Filmuforia
