Foreign Film News

Mob Mentality: Gu Xiaogang Putting Final Touches on “Dwelling by the West Lake”

Published on October 11, 2022

After quietly breaking out of Cannes back in 2019 with Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains – a Critics’ Week closing film, Chinese filmmaker Gu Xiaogang is wrapping up production on Dwelling By West Lake – the second film in his proposed trilogy. The production looks to have begun in March (press conference pic) of this year and then there was a pause (perhaps due to this being a seasonal or temporal element) and it was picked up again in September. Lei Wu and Qinqin Jiang are toplining. Shuli Huang is the cinematographer on the project – he directed two shorts that were recently part of the Critics’ Week section supported by programming teams of Charles Tesson and then, Ava Cahen.

Dwelling by the West Lake sees Mu Lian, a young man came to Hangzhou to find his missing father, and he needs to save his mother who mistakenly entered a crime organization. This is the second chapter of Shanshui Painting series from Gu.

Related Topics:Chinese Cinema, Cinema of China, Dwelling by the West Lake, Gu Xiaogang, top-stories

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).