Still Life

Director: Jia Zhangke, Jia Zhangke, Jia Zhangke

2006 / 111min / 35mm

A man (Han Sanming) and a woman (Zhao Tao) search for their respective spouses while the threat of a massive man-made ecological event looms in the background: the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, which poses an immediate threat to the town of Fengjie, where both have arrived to meet their spouses. Personal catastrophe echoes destruction on an epic scale in Jia’s justly acclaimed film, which illustrates the terrifying ability of the monolithic Chinese state to permanently alter a landscape at will, and the impact of such changes on the psychosocial makeup of a city.