back

Di jiu tian chang

So Long, My Son
Competition 2019
© Li Tienan / Dongchun Films
‘We’re waiting to grow old’. This sentence briefly sums up Yaoyun and his wife Liyun’s bitter realisation about their lives. They were once a happy family – until their son drowned playing by a reservoir. And so Yaojun and Liyun leave their home and plunge into the big city, although nobody knows them there and they cannot even understand the local dialect. Their adopted son Liu Xing does not offer them the comfort they had hoped for either. Defiantly rejecting his ‘foreign’ parents, he one day disappears altogether. The married couple are repeatedly enmeshed in their memories. Finally, they decide to return to the site of their lost hopes.
In this family saga spanning three decades of Chinese history, the private and the political merge and the individual gets caught up in the gears of a society in the throes of constant change. Part melodrama, part critique of the times, this film takes us from the country’s upheaval in the 1980s following the Cultural Revolution to the prospering turbo-capitalism of the present day. Told in sweeping tableaux, it makes visible the deep scars that lie beneath the surface of an ostensibly unbroken success story.
by Wang Xiaoshuai (Director, Screenplay), A Mei (Screenplay)
with Wang Jingchun, Yong Mei, Qi Xi, Wang Yuan, Du Jiang, Ai Liya, Xu Cheng, Li Jingjing, Zhao Yanguozhang People’s Republic of China 2019 Mandarin 175' Colour World premiere

With

  • Wang Jingchun (Liu Yaojun)
  • Yong Mei (Wang Liyun)
  • Qi Xi (Shen Moli)
  • Wang Yuan (Liu Xing)
  • Du Jiang (Shen Hao)
  • Ai Liya (Li Haiyan)
  • Xu Cheng (Shen Yingming)
  • Li Jingjing (Gao Meiyu)
  • Zhao Yanguozhang (Zhang Xinjian)

Crew

Director Wang Xiaoshuai
Screenplay A Mei, Wang Xiaoshuai
Cinematography Kim Hyun-seok
Editing Lee Chatametikool
Music Dong Yingda
Sound Design Fu Kang
Sound Qi Siming
Production Design Lv Dong
Costumes Pang Yan
Make-Up Zhang Peng
Assistant Director Luo Dong
Casting Feng Lei
Production Manager Wang Lijun
Producers Liu Xuan, Wang Xiaoshuai, Yang Wei, Wang Hai, Han Jianv
Co-Producers Doris Guan, Wang Bing, Huang Shaohua

World Sales

The Match Factory

Köln, Germany

Produced by

Dongchung Films

Shanghai, People's Republic of China

Hehe Pictures

Shanghai, People's Republic of China

FunShow Culture Communication Beijing

Peking, People's Republic of China

ZhengFu Pictures

Peking, People's Republic of China

Photos

Press Conference

Red Carpet

Wang Xiaoshuai

© Toronto International Film Festival

The director is recognised as a pioneer of independent filmmaking in China. Over the last 30 years, he has made 15 films, all of which demonstrate a strong social conscience. His directorial debut, The Days, screened in the Forum in 1994 and was subsequently added to the MoMA collection in New York. His films have already featured in the Berlinale Competition three times: Beijing Bicycle won the Grand Jury Prize in 2001; In Love We Trust received the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in 2008; and So Long, My Son won two Silver Bears, for Best Actor and Best Actress, in 2019. In 2010, the French Ministry of Culture awarded him the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Filmography

1993 Dongchun di rizi (The Days) 1995 Ji du han leng (Frozen) 1999 Bian dan gu niang (So Close to Paradise) 2000 Meng huan tian yuan (Suburban Dreams) 2001 Shi qi sui de dan che (Beijing Bicycle) 2003 Er di (Drifters) 2005 Qing hong (Shanghai Dreams) 2008 Zuo you (In Love We Trust) 2010 Ri zhao chong qing (Chongqing Blues) 2011 Wo 11 (11 Flowers) 2014 Chuang ru zhe (Red Amnesia) 2018 Wo de jing tou (Chinese Portrait); Documentary 2019 Di jiu tian chang (So Long, My Son) 2022 Lv Guan (The Hotel) 2024 Wo Tu (Above the Dust)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2024