Xiao Wu

Fenyang, Shanxi Province – Xiao Wu and Xiao Yong both worked as pickpockets in their adolescence, but Xiao Wu comes to realize that their paths have diverged in the year 1997. Xiao Yong has become a model entrepreneur through cigarette trafficking, while Xiao Wu still practices his old trade with artisan-like devotion. Xiao Wu meets a club girl, Mei Mei, whom he thinks is the love of his life, but she disappears without trace. A prisoner of time, Xiao Wu is forever shackled to his past.

JIA Zhangke was born in 1970 in Fenyang, Shanxi Province of China. He graduated from Beijing Film Academy and made his first feature film Xiao Wu in 1998. Since then, he has been actively involved in filmmaking over China. His Still Life won the Golden Lion Award at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival in 2006. His latest feature, Ash Is Purest White, was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. In 2017, Jia, together former Venice festival head Marco Mueller, launched the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival in his home province.