Director Jia Zhang-Ke returns with a sprawling portrait of romantic destiny culled from 22 years of footage with “Caught by the Tides,” his latest collaboration with his wife and muse Zhao Tao.
Here, she plays Quiaoqiao, who drifts through decades of Chinese history while witnessing its profound and turbulent political changes. Sideshow and Janus Films open “Caught by the Tides” in select theaters May 9, and IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer premiere below.
Here’s a synopsis courtesy of the New York Film Festival: “The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhang-ke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous ‘Caught by the Tides.’ Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences — ‘Caught by the Tides’ is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story.”
The NYFF synopsis also notes that “the film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change: of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas.”
This spring premiere of “Caught by the Tides” is right in time for a May Criterion Channel program of Chinese filmmaker Jia’s best films, including “Ash Is Purest White,” “Mountains May Depart,” “A Touch of Sin,” “24 City,” “Still Life,” “Platform,” and more.
More on “Caught by the Tides” from IndieWire’s review: “Tracing the faintest contours of a scripted love story around the scaffolding of some documentary footage that Jia has collected over the course of 22 years… Jia’s focus is squarely on resilience instead of erosion. How do we maintain a coherent sense of self, let alone love somebody else, in a world so volatile and impermanent that people will sink centuries of history to the bottom of the sea just to make way for tomorrow?”
Sideshow and Janus Films will release “Caught by the Tides” in select theaters on Friday, May 9. Check out the film’s first trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below. Director Jia will be in New York and Los Angeles for Q&As for the film’s release.
