Caught By the Tides by Jia Zhang-ke is sold to Sideshow and Janus in the United States

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired U.S. distribution rights to master Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke’s latest feature film Captured by the tides, which premiered to rave reviews at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Both distributors said they would “release the film exclusively in theaters in the coming months.”

Captured by the tides is composed almost entirely of improvisational sequences that Jia shot across China over nearly 25 years with his troupe of longtime collaborators. In an interview in Cannes, the director said The Hollywood Reporter that he began sculpting a feature film from the hundreds of hours of footage he had accumulated during the quiet days of China’s three-year long pandemic shutdown.

THRThe lead reviewer summarized the resulting film’s innovative narrative and formal approaches by writing that it “comes and goes like poetry”.

Like virtually all of Jia’s work, since his second feature film Unknown pleasures (2002), Captured by the tides focuses on the presence of his wife and muse, the always convincing Chinese actress Zhao Tao. Relying heavily on a soundtrack of traditional and popular Chinese music, Jia has pared down and recomposed his decades of material into a powerfully affecting narrative. In the resulting story, Zhao plays a young woman named Qiaoqiao who is swept up in time and transported across China in pursuit of her runaway lover, Brother Bin (voiced by Jia’s longtime producer Li Zhubin).

Many critics have pointed out how Captivated by the tides“The vast temporal portrait echoes the portrait of Richard Linklater. Childhood – but with Jia’s story depicting as much the growing pains of modern China as the development of her characters over several years.

“Jia Zhang-ke is one of the most important filmmakers of the 21st century and, along with Captured by the tides he delivers what will surely be considered one of his great films, giv[ing] “We have the gift of watching Zhao Tao for over two decades and culminating in one of the best scenes of their career together,” Sideshow and Janus Films said in a statement. “We’re excited to bring this to the American public in the coming months.”

Captured by the tides is a production of X Stream Pictures, Momo Pictures, Huanxi Media and Wishart Media, in association with MK2 Films, Ad Vitam and Bitters End. It is produced by Casper Liang Jiayan, Shozo Ichiyama and Zhang Dong. Jia and Wan Jiahuan are credited as the film’s screenwriters. MK2 managed the international title against Sideshow and Janus.

Sideshow and Janus Films had a busy May at Cannes, winning Payal Kapadia’s grand prize Everything we imagine as light; Entrance Un Certain Regard by Gints Zilbalodis To flow, which has just won four prizes at the Annecy Animation Festival; Alain Guiraudie’s title at Cannes premiere…