Top Picks From First Batch of 2018 Beijing International Film Fest Showings, Apr 15-22

The eighth Beijing International Film Festival – running Apr 15-22 – has announced this year's first batch of films. The list is a mixture of award season favorites such as Get Out, The Disaster Artist, and The Florida Project as well as this year's special programs, which pay tribute to female filmmakers as well as several acclaimed directors including Ingmar Bergman, Wong Kar-wai, Wes Anderson, and Pedro Almodovar. There'll also be a section dedicated to the X-Men franchise as well as showings of all four Jurassic Park movies. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for the full list of films released so far.

The festival will take place across numerous cinemas and venues in Beijing and there's currently no word yet on when tickets will go on sale, though based off of previous experience, they tend to disappear quickly (read: get given away to people with access). We'll update this blog once news of tickets is released.

For now, in order to get you excited for what's to come, here are seven of our picks from the first batch of films: 

1. Kaili Blues (2016)
This stunning directorial debut by Chinese director Bi Gan garnered critical acclaim and left crowds with high expectations for what this young director will release next. Kaili Blues is a melancholy and dreamlike portrayal of a doctor's search for an abandoned child, which spirals into a clash between his future and past.

2. Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele’s 2017 Academy Award-winning directorial debut, Get Out took home Best Screenplay and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, and earned lead Daniel Kaluuya a nomination for Best Actor. An understandably anxious first meeting between Chris and his girlfriend Rose's parents quickly descends into a disturbing series of discoveries that seemingly arise from the anxieties surrounding their interracial relationship.

3. Shower (1999)
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, Zhang Yang's comedy centers around a family-run bathhouse and the reconciliation between a father and his distant eldest son, who rushes back to Beijing upon hearing that his father had supposedly died.

4. Wild Strawberries (1957)
This year's festival has an entire series of film screenings from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, of which Wild Strawberries may just be his best. A Swedish idiom that describes a place of nostalgic value, Wild Strawberries follows aging medical professor Isak Borg as he travels through Sweden as well as through his past, coming to terms with the life choices that he has made.

5. Rouge (1988)
Directed by Stanley Kwan, Rouge tells the story of Fleur, a mistress in a 1930s Hong Kong brothel, and who lives a detached and languid life until she meets her match, an heir to a chain of pharmacies. The two agree to a suicide pact but 50 years later, Fleur's ghost appears in a newspaper office to place an ad for her lover, who never made it to the afterlife.

6. Call Me By Your Name (2017) Since removed from the program
Based on the 2007 André Aciman novel by the same name, Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name follows 17-year-old Elio Pearlman, played by Timothée Chalamet, as he navigates his first love with Oliver, played by Armie Hammer. An empathetic and timeless coming of age story, Call Me Bby Your Name was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Original Song, and Best Adapted Screenplay, which it won, at this year's Oscars.

7. Yellow Earth (1984)
Chen Kaige's debut film (with cinematography by Zhang Yimou), Yellow Earth follows Red Army soldier Gu Qing as he is sent to a Guomindang enclave in Sha'anxi province to learn local folk songs and rewrite them with Communist vigor. Upon staying with a local family, Gu's Communist revolutionary mindset rubs off on the family's daughter Cuiqiao who rejects her parent's long-time plan to betroth her to an older man in the village and begins to fantasize about fleeing and leaving her peasant life behind.

Find more information on the official Beijing International Film Festival website here. Below is the list of films released in this first batch:

Photos: thefilmstage.com, theplaylist.net, pxhst.co, qingmang.me, vivonscurieux.fr, blogspot.com, Mtime