Elephant Sitting Still

Winner
FIPRESCI Prize
Berlin International Film Festival
Nominee
Best First Feature Award
Berlin International Film Festival
One of the great achievements of recent cinema...[the filmmaker's] view of social breakdown rises to a total vision of existential rage.

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An Elephant Sitting Still

Under the gloomy sky of a small town in northern China, different protagonists' lives are intertwined in this furious tale of nihilistic rage. While protecting his friend from a dangerous school bully, 16-year-old Wei Bu pushes the tormentor down a staircase. Wei escapes the scene and later learns that the bully is hospitalized and gravely injured. Wei's neighbor, the 60-year-old Wang Jin, is estranged from his family and, with nothing to lose, decides to join him. Later the pair is joined by Huang Ling, Wei's classmate. She is bedeviled by a destructive affair with a married school official. Together, this unlikely and desperate trio decide their only hope is to flee as the bully's gangster brother, enraged parents, and vindictive school authorities embark on a cold-blooded hunt across town.

Fan Chao’s travel made possible through the generous support of the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation.
Not Rated
Genre
Drama
Runtime
234
Language
Mandarin
Director
Bo Hu
Writer(s)
Bo Hu
Cast
Yu Zhang, Yuchang Peng, Uvin Wang
Awards:
Winner, FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin International Film Festival
Nominee, Best First Feature Award, Berlin International Film Festival
FEATURED REVIEW
A.O. Scott, New York Times

The much-talked-about elephant in Hu Bo’s “An Elephant Sitting Still” never appears onscreen, but it isn’t an imaginary beast. The sedentary pachyderm is rumored to live in Manzhouli, a city in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China, some distance from the gray industrial city where the film’s ...

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