In Competition: “24 City” by Jia Zhangke

Chinese director Jia Zhangke, President of the Cinéfondation and short films Jury in 2007, is at the Festival with 24 City, a feature screening in Competition. The title refers to a luxury condominium community in Chengdu, built on the site of an old factory and the workers’ housing which used to surround it.

Jia Zhangke, who was in Official Selection in 2002 for Unknown Pleasures, and awarded the Golden Lion at the 63rd Venice Film Festival in 2006 for Still Life, had this to say about his latest endeavor: "The film is made up of interviews with five workers, who share their real-life experiences with us, and of fictional monologues by three women. I decided to integrate documentary and fiction in this parallel flow because this seemed to me the best way of representing the last half-century of Chinese history. As far as I’m concerned, history is always a blend of facts and imagination. This state-owned factory which supplies the Air Force and other sectors of the military was founded 60 years ago. It has weathered all of the successive political movements under the communist government. I’m not interested in chronicling this history as such, but rather in seeing how a century of experiments with socialism has impacted the fate of the Chinese people."