Shanghai, a fast-changing metropolis, a port city where people come and go. Eighteen locals, including film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, ex-soldiers and criminals, recall their lives. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai from the 1930s to 2010.

Marrying city symphony to historical interrogation, Jia Zhangke examines the film industry’s role in the shifting fortunes of Shanghai. With a structuring device that sees actor Zhao Tao roaming local neighborhoods, I Wish I Knew is an oral history of an economic center in a permanent state of flux.