Kun Chen
Painted Skin is based on one of Pu Songling’s classic short stories in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Zhou Xun stars as Xiao Wei, a fox spirit that feasts on human hearts in order to maintain her lovely, youthful appearance. When General Wang Sheng (Chen Kun) ‘rescues’ her from a band of bandits and brings her home, trouble brews as the demon falls in love with the general.
The world is on the verge of a devastating war with monsters who are coming to retrieve the Scaling Stone. Yin Yang Master Qingming’s life is in danger and he travels to different worlds to prepare for the upcoming assaults. On his journey, Qingming finds that the key to all the calamities is embracing his hybrid identity of both human and monster.
When barbarian hordes threaten her homeland, the brave and cunning Mulan disguises herself as a male soldier to swell the ranks in her aging father’s stead. The warrior’s remarkable courage drives her through powerful battle scenes and brutal wartime strategy. Mulan loses dear friends to the enemy’s blade as she rises to become one of her country’s most valuable leaders — but can she win the war before her secret is exposed?
At the beginning of the 1990s, famous tomb explorer Hu Bayi decided to retire and move to the United States with his girlfriend Shirley. But before his wedding, Bayi discovers his first love Ding Shitian, who supposedly had died in the “One Hundred Cave” 20 years ago, is actually still alive. Together with Shirley and his old exploration partner, Bayi unravels a terrible millennium-old secret…
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate picks up three years after the infamous Dragon Inn was burnt down in the desert when its innkeeper Jade vanished. A new gang of marauders had taken over – innkeepers by day and treasure hunters by night. The inn is the rumoured location of a lost city buried under the desert, and its hidden treasure would only be revealed by a gigantic storm every 60 years. The gang used the inn as a front to locate the lost treasure.
The story of Chinese legendary anti-hero Zhong Kui, a young man endowed with mysterious powers who is forced into a battle among the realms of Heaven, Earth and Hell in the course of his attempt to save his countrymen and the woman he loves.
The Founding of a Republic is a Chinese historical film commissioned by China’s film regulator and made by the state-owned China Film Group (CFG) to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. The film retells the tale of the Communist ascendancy and triumph.
When three friends open a hot pot restaurant in a former bomb shelter, they discover it’s linked by a single wall to the bank vault next door. While deciding to take the easy money or go to the police, they find out one of the bank’s employees is a former classmate and look to enlist her in deciding their future.
According to demon lore, it takes hundreds of years to attain human form. Even then, lacking a human heart, a demon cannot experience the true pains and passions of existence. However, there is a legend that if a pure human heart is freely offered to a demon, it can become a mortal and experience true life. Sequel of Painted Skin (2008).
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor’s beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.
Xiaoqing and Xiaohong are twins with distinctive, different personalities. Xiaoqing believes in true love while Xiaohong only cares about money. Drama ensues when they both start pursuing love for the sake of money.
Flora Lau’s debut feature is a beautifully formed, subtle film that focuses on the lives of two people with very different prospects – a wealthy Hong Kong woman and her mainland Chinese chauffeur – both trying to cope with life’s unexpected dramas. Anna (Carina Lau) struggles to maintain appearances with her status-conscious friends after her husband mysteriously vanishes. Fai’s (Chen Kun) wife is heavily pregnant with their second child, has no health care entitlements in Hong Kong and cannot give birth in their homeland without incurring penalties for breaching the one-child policy. While their daily routines intersect, their fates only momentarily converge and Lau elegantly critiques the social contradictions at play by paralleling their predicaments rather than constructing drama between the two protagonists. (Source: LFF programme)
Set in China during the Warlords Period of the1920s, notorious bandit chief Zhang descends upon a remote provincial town posing as its new mayor, an identity that he had hijacked from Old Tang, himself a small-time imposter. Hell-bent on making a fast buck, Zhang soon meets his match in the tyrannical local gentry Huang as a deadly battle of wit and brutality ensues.
