Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years before, to find himself musing on the past and trying to retrieve its traces. Back for his father’s funeral, Luo recalls the death of an old friend, Wildcat, and searches for lost love Wan Qiwen, who continues to haunt him.

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.