Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #97. Liu Jian’s Art College 1994

A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

Identified as the film that was pulled from the Directors’ Fortnight less than a week before it was set to premiere, Liu Jian‘s A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (formerly this had begun as a different project known as School Town) surprisingly didn’t premiere everywhere else in ’22. The Nanjing based animator and filmmaker Piercing I (2010) and Have A Nice Day (2017) the filmmaker inserts some autobiographical elements in this text. Could the filmmaker be making a second trip to the Berlinale?

Gist: This tells the story of Lao Wang is a middle-aged man. He works in a security department of a college which is located at a big school town. He lives a calm life until freshman Xiao Wang has a conflict with his roommate. We’re expecting some sort of generational conflict, difficult resolutions, the safety of a mild-mannered and normal pace of life to be disrupted by darker matter.

Release Date/Prediction: After the Directors’ Fortnight snafu, we could see this premiering in Berlinale or….actually being invited for a second time to the same section this May.