Finally making an apparition in theatres this coming August 17th is New Yorker Films’ Sunflower. Also making an apparition is the film’s poster image.
Zhang Yang (who is currently working on a spiritual journey type of feature that crosses into the Tibetan landscape) directed the San Sebastián Int. Film Festival favorite and Toronto film festival 2005 premiered film.
An autobiographical portrait, this is about the changing Chinese society between the 1970s and the 1990s. Focusing on the years 1976, 1987 and 1999 – in the lives of Zhang Gengnian and his son, Xiangyang.
In the years leading up to 1976, when The Cultural Revolution and the reign of the notorious ŒGang of Four¹ were coming to an end, Zhang Gengnian was an absentee father. Condemned to spending six years in a rural ŒCadre School¹ – a labor camp where he was to be politically “re-educated” – Gengnian missed Xiangyang¹s formative years. At nine-years-old, Xiangyang is having the time of his life.
By 1987, Xiangyang has become an accomplished draughtsman, but his conflicts with his father seem set in stone. While he dreams of escaping his father¹s clutches by running away with his girlfriend to Guangzhou, Xiangyang remains stuck at home, forced to study for the university entrance exams.
