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Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2024 • China
Starring Zhao Tao, Li Zhubin, Pan Jianlin

In this visionary chronicle of China’s turbulent new century, acclaimed director Jia Zhangke embarks on a kaleidoscopic odyssey across time and space, incorporating footage captured for his previous films into an entirely original, captivating epic. Drawing on a twenty-three-year collaboration between Jia and actors Zhao Tao and Li Zhubin, CAUGHT BY THE TIDES casts them as a pair of estranged lovers, tracking these characters across an increasingly alien China as they age in real time, from the dawn of the millennium to the COVID-19 era. Observing the future-shock developments transforming his country, Jia constructs a sensorially immersive, emotionally profound portrait of both a world in flux and two people navigating its uncertain currents.