Mountains May Depart (Blu-ray), Kino Classics, Drama

Mountains May Depart (Blu-ray) Screened in competition at the 68th Cannes International Film Festival, Jia Zhangke's Mountains May Depart is among the Chinese auteur's most ambitious works. The multi-generation tale of love, loss and displacement carries from a woman's life-changing decision in a small mining town in 1999 China to the struggles and anguish of her alienated son in Australia over two decades later. Partially set in Jia's hometown of Fenyang, Mountains May Depart stars his wife and muse, Zhao Tao, as well as Sylvia Chang, Zhang Yi (Dearest) and breakthrough newcomer Dong Zijian (Young Style). - In 1999 Fenyang, the vivacious Tao (Zhao Tao) is loved by two men, simple and steady mine worker Liangzi (Liang Jingdong) and brash and newly rich Zhang (Zhang Yi). When Tao chooses to marry Zhang, Liangzi skips town. In 2014, the gravely ill Liangzi returns to Fenyang with his wife and child. Tao has since divorced, but gets by on her own running the local gas station. Meanwhile, the enterprising Liangzi, who has custody of their son Dollar, has remarried in Shanghai and plans to emigrate. In 2025 Australia, disaffected, college-aged Dollar (Dong Zijian) can no longer speak Chinese and has only vague memories of the mother whom he hasn't seen since childhood. Estranged from his aggressive father, he finds solace in the arms of his much older Chinese teacher (Sylvia Chang).