Co-presented by the Austin Asian American Film Festival, this early Jia Zhangke showcases the master’s preoccupations with the alienation of Chinese youth under globalization and singular dreamlike style, all shot on digital video. It follows street kids Bin Bin and Xiao Ji as they haunt karaoke bars and cross paths with a young local singer and dancer working for a liquor company (played by Zhao Tao, a character viewers may recognize from Zhangke’s recent self-referential work Caught by the Tides). Zhangke’s portraits of how Chinese people feel about their country’s breakneck pace of change are ever-relevant sensory feasts meant to be seen in theatres. – Lina Fisher
