Lonely City

SHORT:
Taxi driver Zhang Zhiyong drives around the city, picking up a variety of passengers. Among them are a woman who comes from outside the city and is looking for her husband, a young internet celebrity who is searching for her father, and a security guard who is scattering his father’s ashes in the river. Each passenger carries their own unspoken loneliness, and Zhang Zhiyong also has his own story. His taxi is a journey through life itself.

LANG:
Cab driver Zhang Zhiyong lives alone in Chongqing and has made his car his home. He takes a variety of passengers, each with their own story.

Chapter 1: Strangers whose paths cross

He Xi, a woman from Inner Mongolia, takes Zhang’s car while searching for her husband Jiang Wei, who left home years ago. When she finally finds him, she discovers that he has been transformed by an MCN agency into a popular livestreamer known as ‘Wandering Master’, who attracts millions of followers. Surrounded by a crowd on the riverbank, he seems like a character in an absurd theatre play. He Xi and Jiang Wei face each other in silence, and then she leaves, heartbroken.

Chapter 2: The House Underwater

Security guard Lao Liu’s hometown in Fengjie was flooded during the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. After the death of his father, Zhang and Lao Liu travel together to return his father’s ashes. Since his hometown is now underwater, Lao Liu has to board a boat from the resettlement site to the waterline. Using modern measuring equipment, he locates the position of his former home, scatters his father’s ashes in the river, pays his respects on the shore, and hopes that his father can return home.

Chapter 3: The Rising River, from the afternoon

Zhang wanders the streets and meets his nephew Xiao Wu, who has run away from school. Xiao Wu asks Zhang to help him find his father, whom he has never met. Years ago, Xiao Wu’s father worked on river boats and eventually divorced his mother. Together, Zhang and Xiao Wu search along the river and eventually find Xiao Wu’s father’s new wife and child on an extravagant ship called the Mount Fuji. The stepmother tells Xiao Wu that his father has gone to sea, which makes Xiao Wu sad.
Through their conversations, we learn that Zhang left his hometown after losing his own child in a fire caused by an evil nanny. Xiao Wu reveals that Zhang’s ex-wife has since remarried and is expecting another child, encouraging Zhang to move past his grief. Zhang drives off as the streetlights come on, casting a warm glow on the interior of his car.

Director’s Biography – Zhidan G奥

Director Gao Zhidan has a master’s degree in directing from the School of Theatre, Film and Television at the Communication University of China and also studied at the Department of Literature at the Beijing Film Academy. Gao is a member of the Theoretical Criticism Committee of the China Film Association, a member of the Fujian Film Script Creation Research Center and a lecturer in the Department of Film and Television Arts at the School of Communication at Fujian Normal University.

Director’s comment

This is a story about searching: a wife searches for her husband, a security guard searches for his lost hometown, a son searches for his father. In this strange and complex time, we may not be searching for a specific person, but for a clearer understanding of ourselves – who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Through these stories, we seek to reflect on the transformative events of the last few decades in Chinese history, while also presenting the survival experiences of people in our digital age.
The three groups of passengers embody three generations – people born in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s – ordinary people who reflect the larger temporal backdrop. Each of them carries traces of the era’s memory: the layoffs, the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the one-child policy – all of which resonate subtly in the background of the story. Together, they embark on a journey along the river, uncovering themes of life and identity.

Zhidan G奥: director, screenwriter
Jing Shen: producer
Cast
Pengfei Yu: ‘Zhang Zhiyong’
Yun Gao: ‘He Xi’
Yihong Ou: ‘Xiaowu’

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Completion date: 8 October 2024
Country of origin: China
Language: Chinese
Format: digital
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Film colour: colour