filmbriefs
Actor · 1976

Shu Qi

3
briefs
13:00
average
39 min
in total
On film.briefs3
13:00

Resurrection

Bi Gan · 2025

Bi Gan’s Resurrection is a 156-minute Mandarin-language science fiction film structured around the six Buddhist senses. Starring Jackson Yee as a dying ‘Deliriant’ who relives a century across four dreams, aided by Shu Qi’s enigmatic guide, it uses formal techniques — long takes, double exposure, stop motion — to explore dreaming as forbidden ritual. Shot by Dong Jingsong and scored by M83, it premiered at Cannes 2025, winning the Prix Spécial, and was released theatrically in China and France late that year. Its ambition is liturgical: to make cinema itself the site of resurrection.

13:00

Millennium Mambo

Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 2001

Millennium Mambo is a 2001 Taiwanese arthouse romance directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, following Vicky (Shu Qi) as she reflects on her early twenties in Taipei at the turn of the millennium. Structured as a hazy, non-linear recollection, it prioritises atmosphere over exposition — lingering on neon-lit bars, subway platforms, and quiet apartments — with Shu Qi’s restrained performance and Mark Lee Ping Bin’s soft-focus cinematography anchoring its meditative pace. Awarded the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes for sound design, it is a study in temporal drift, where romance serves less as plot than as ambient pressure.

13:00

The Assassin

Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 2015

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 2015 wuxia film, set in the Tang dynasty, follows an assassin ordered to kill her cousin and former betrothed. Loosely based on a ninth-century story, it replaces genre conventions with austere composition, elliptical storytelling and profound stillness. Shot by Mark Lee Ping Bin and scored by Lim Giong, it won the Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film and Best Director at Cannes.