Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains(HKAFF 2019)

Sharing its title with a 14th-century landscape scroll painting, Gu Xiaogang’s ambitious directorial debut gradually and artfully unfurls vignettes of ordinary life. Set in the writer-director’s hometown of Fuyang, the sweeping, slow-burning drama introduces an elderly matriarch and her four sons, and follows the changes in their families and fortunes over the four seasons of a year. The first in a planned trilogy of films about life along the Yangtze River, this meticulous portrait of a familial clan and a community in the midst of transformation has drawn comparisons to Edward Yang for its eloquent observation of the mundane yet meaningful ebb and flow of life.