The Shadow Play

During a protest against a redevelopment in Guangzhou, an official falls from a building and dies. A young policeman starts investigating and the file opens thirty years back: a demolished neighbourhood, land deals, a woman who disappeared and a man who left for Taiwan. The further it goes, the less the present crime can be separated from the old agreements. The subject is not the killing but how a city was built. Every character's present wealth rests on the demolition of an old district; the crime structure is laid over a history of development. The form is raw and fast. Handheld camera, jump cuts, low light; Lou Ye's known manner is denser here and the shifts in time are made without explanation. The story of the production is part of the film. The director said getting it past the censors was the hardest work of his career and that the process took two years. At the premiere he told the audience he had deliberately left the traces of the deletions and changes visible in the film, so the evidence of censorship sits inside the image. He had previously been banned from filmmaking for five years over an earlier film. Jing Boran plays the policeman, with Ma Sichun and Song Jia in the women's roles. Who it is for: viewers who like Chinese independent cinema and complicated time structures. Who it is not for: anyone wanting ease of following; the narrative is crowded and some connections really are missing because of the cuts.