Crossing the Border

Swan song with a chapter like structure, spans many years from the onset of the Cultural Revolution to the 'open door' policies of the late seventies and eighties. The focus is on how off screen national events impact on individual lives, here, those of an elderly composer with an opium habit who is in constant political trouble with the authorities and his son who dissociates himself from his father.

Set in the modern city of Shenzhen, an intoverted young woman slowly moves away from her brash boyfriend and, despite her inhibitions, gets a crush on another young teenage woman.

A couple from China, husband and wife, are estranged when the man relocates to Europe to pursue formal training in art. When they reunite some time later in Hong Kong during his summer vacation, they find that they've each grown emotionally, but in different ways. Will they be able to reconcile their differences?

Drama about a young Chinese girl who arrives in London to pursue her dreams, and the three men who fall for her. In order to study music, Lan Lan must marry her sponsor's son, for whom she has no affection. She eventually takes flight and befriends a Chinese engineer and his flatmate. Together they set up an illegal Chinese food takeaway, but as the business flourishes, the tensions in their relationship surface.

Tony Rayns presents the work of the 'Fifth Generation' and other innovative filmmakers who emerged during the 1980s in China.