BRIEF HISTORY OF A FAMILY (JIA TING JIAN SHI)
DIRECTOR: JIANJIE LIN
99 MINS, CHINA, DENMARK, France, qatar, 2024, SUBTITLED
Official Selection, Panorama Section, Berlin International Film Festival 2024
The screening on Thursday 20 March at IFI Dublin will be followed by a Q&A with writer-director Jianjie Lin, hosted by film critic Tara Brady (The Irish Times)
The screening on Sunday 23 March at TRISKEL Cork will be followed by a Q&A with writer-director Jianjie Lin, hosted by Irish film writer-director Rebecca Daly.
The screening on Monday 24 March at the EYE Cinema Galway will be followed by a Q&A with writer-director Jianjie Lin, hosted by Irish film writer-director Seán Breathnach.
After a mysterious incident at high school, the lives of classmates Wei, an outgoing only boy from a ‘perfect’ middle-class family, and Shuo, a sharp-eyed introvert from a troubled background, become intertwined. Wei introduces Shuo to his father (a cell biologist) and mother (a former flight attendant), and Shuo gradually becomes part of the family, discovering the dynamics of their comfortable existence overshadowed by silent secrets. Chinese writer-director Jianjie Lin's precise and suspenseful debut feature, a psycho-thriller family drama, explores the one-child policy in contemporary China and reveals the psychological scars and repressed emotions of a family, and the social expectations and economic pressures of underlying Chinese society.
NOTES BY MARIE-PIERRE RICHARD
