A Touch of Sin (天注定)

Jia Zhangke paints a stunning panoramic portrait of contemporary China, driven by profit-seeking, unbridled economic growth and rapid urbanisation, with prosperity for a select minority and despair and failure for the vast majority. Four stories picked from local fait-divers (three of which end in murder and one in suicide) set in contrasting geographical and social environments, from bursting at the seams southern metropolises to rural communities. Here, Jia leaves his familiar path of semi-documentary and semi-fiction hybrid and ventures into territory that, on the face of it, you don't associate with his cinematic image: genre cinema, the Asian fight film. The indiscriminate violence is extra powerful and shocking because it suddenly erupts in Jia's serene images. Because, yes, every shot is yet another marvel of composition, charge and cinematic intelligence.

"In A Touch of Sin, Jia is attuned to, and saddened by, the violence he sees creeping through his country, caused at least partly by the ever-widening disparity between the rich and poor. He ends on a note that’s more haunting than hopeful." - Village Voice