Bi Gan

All the inventiveness of Bi Gan—the Chinese cineaste best known for an epic with an astonishing hour-long take—is channeled into his spellbinding new short. Unfurling from a feline point-of-view, this surrealist trick film draws from the realm of dreams and is brimming with technical magic.

A dazzling, dizzying visual feast, Bi Gan’s opulent neo-noir rides a time-twisting slipstream of memory, dream and reality through the urban wastelands of Guizhou. The central set-piece invites special mention: a staggeringly audacious coup de cinéma in the form of an unbroken 59-minute shot.