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PRE-ORDER NOW!! RELEASED 20th SEPTEMBER 2010

★★★★ I loved 24 City…poetic, humanistic... compelling.’Dave Calhoun, Time Out
“A most sophisticated and revelatory approach to documenting recent Chinese history... with heartbreaking pathos.”(Cannes Officielle) Nick James, Sight & Sound
‘A masterly combination of fact and fiction... Jia once again humanises China’s modern history and turn it into poetry.’ Tony Rayns, LFF
“AMAZING & intricately structured.” Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES


Chengdu, nowadays.
The state-owned factory 420 shuts down to give way to a complex of luxury apartments called "24 CITY". Three generations, eight characters: old workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories are the history of China.


The dean of Chinese independent cinema, Jia Zhangke is a poet of facts. Jia’s latest bulletin on the state of the world’s most rapidly expanding economy is more obviously documentary than the director’s previous fiction films — or perhaps more obviously fictional than his documentaries.

24 City takes as its subject a gigantic Chengdu munitions plant slated for conversion into high-rise luxury apartments. A half-dozen retired workers, brought from all over China to labor in the massive factory, play themselves as the (barely) living monuments of Mao’s China, their stories supplemented by monologues delivered by several professional actors, including Joan Chen.

Jia’s framing is, as always, impeccable. His oral history of post-revolutionary China (and subversively old-fashioned hymn to industrial production) is artfully composed, rich in offbeat details and punctuated with pop songs, including the Internationale. An ambivalent exercise in Communist nostalgia as well as a moving collective portrait.


Cast:Joan Chen, Lu Liping, Zhao Tao, Chen Jianbin
Director: Jia Zhang Ke
Certificate: U
Running Time: 107 mins
Language: Mandarin with English Subtitles