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

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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.

Eric Lavallée
Eric Lavalléehttps://www.ericlavallee.com
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist, and critic at IONCINEMA.com, established in 2000. A regular at Sundance, Cannes, and Venice, Eric holds a BFA in film studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013, he served on the narrative competition jury at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson’s "This Teacher" (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022, he was a New Flesh Juror for Best First Feature at the Fantasia International Film Festival. His top films for 2023 include The Zone of Interest (Glazer), Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An), Totem (Lila Avilés), La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher), All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson). He is a Golden Globes Voter.

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