In 2001, Qiaoqiao makes a small living as a singer and nightclub dancer in Datong, an industrial city in China. When her lover Bin leaves Datong without a word in search of a better life, Qiaoqiao begins a decades-long search that spans the whole nation along its profound social transformations. 

Time, memory, and decades of accelerating modernity fold in on themselves in this dazzling coup de cinéma from director Jia Zhangke. Comprised of footage shot over twenty years—with star Zhao Tao, as ever, front and center—Caught By the Tides glides through the slipstream of China’s 21st century.