24 City

Friday, June 5 - Thursday, June 18, 2009

Ends Thursday! Shot in unnervingly vivid high-def video, Jia Zhang-ke’s 24 CITY fuses documentary and fictional techniques to create another of the lauded director’s signature tales of the new, hypercapitalist China. In Chengdu, the compound of a massive munitions plant is being converted into luxury high-rise apartments. As the buildings are demolished around them and the past is wiped away, former workers (including Joan Chen) reminisce about the vanished world where they lived and worked. Meanwhile, a materialistic younger generation single-mindedly runs after wealth and consumer happiness.

“Jia Zhangke must now be the most important filmmaker in the world. Whether he’s the most inventive, entertaining, moving, thoughtful or visually enthralling is another question. I think he might well be in the running in all those categories; but among other first-rate filmmakers, he clearly surpasses everyone in the scale of his subject matter, which is nothing less than the biggest economic, social and physical transformation taking place in the world today, in the most populous of all countries. ” – Stuart Klawans, The Nation

• Country China
• Language Chinese
• Rating NR
• Year 2009
• Running Time 107 minutes
• Distributor Cinema Guild
• Website http://www.cinemaguild.com/
• Director Jia Zhang-ke
• Cast Joan Chen, Lv Liping, Zhao Dao

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.