Huo Jianqi Movies

Huo Jianqi, former art director for noted Chinese filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang, debuted with this delicately wrought, beautifully photographed drama about delivering the mail to remote mountain villages in southeastern China's Hunan province. A father (Teng Rujun) prepares to hand his 112-mile mail route over to his son. At dawn, the two embark on the three-day round trip on foot. Traveling along the rugged landscape of wind-blown hills, craggy rocks, and winding rivers, the son learns not only about the isolated communities to which they deliver mail but also about his own father. Postmen in the Mountains was screened at the 1999 Montreal Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

In this low-key drama from China, Lai Shuang Yang (Tao Hong) is a single woman in her mid-thirties who runs a small restaurant in Chongqing. Shuang Yang's cool and confident demeanor masks the fact that she's become an emotional wreck. After the death of her mother, Shuang Yang raised her younger brother Jiujiu, only to see him fall into drug addiction. Mei (Yang Yi), Shuang Yang's assistant at the restaurant, has fallen into a deep depression over Jiujiu's addiction, and has attempted suicide. Shuang Yang's sister-in-law, Xiaojin (Pan Yueming), has little interest in her son Duo'er and usually leaves him with Shuang Yang, who developed a close attachment with the boy when she wet-nursed him after he was born. And there's talk that a redevelopment project will close down the market district where Shuang Yang has her restaurant, forcing her to either move or close down. In the midst of all this, Zhuo Xiongzhou (Tao Zeru), a middle-aged businessman who has been quietly dining at Shuang Yang's restaurant for over a year, finally works up the nerve to talk to her, and after going out for a drink with him, she finds herself pondering the prospect of a romantic relationship for the first time in years. As she juggles work and her personal crises with her new love life, Shuang Yang also takes steps toward reclaiming a house that her family lost during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Shenghuo Xiu received its North American premier at the 2002 Montreal Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi