Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #192. Zhang Yimou’s Full River Red

Published on January 5, 2023

Full River Red (Man jiang hong)

Currently in a creative overdrive with what appears to be one project overlapping the next, word last summer was that Zhang Yimou was moving into a period mystery thriller with some comedic elements in what we imagine would be a sizeable budget considering that his last pair in box office champions Cliff Walkers (read review) and his co-directed Sniper (2022) had solid coin in place. The septuagenarian’s Full River Red is toplined by Jackson Yee with supporting players to include Shen Teng, Lei Jiayin, Yue Yunpeng and Zhang Yi. Written by Chen Yu and Zhang Yimou, the title shares its name with a famous poem and is set in the Southern Song Dynasty. The trailer was just released.

Gist: A pawn tries to get rid of a traitorous minister, Qin Hui, when he leads an army to the border for talks with a Jurchen mission.

Release Date/Prediction: This is receiving a domestic release this month in China – so the film festival route would begin in Berlin or genre fests in the first and second quarters.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member 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 served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).