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World Fantastic Blue

Youth

FENG Xiaogang

China2017 135min Korean Premiere

Synopsis

A movie about a military arts group in the 1970s. Under socialism, there is love, jealousy, conspiracy and betrayal, and the good person is rather distressed and pushed outward. A film that depicts the most beautiful moment of youth.

Program Note

This is a story of youths working in a military troupe in the midst of Cultural Revolution of the 1970s in China. Some are sons of party officers, and some are daughters of imprisoned traitors, but all equally become comrades to each other and devote to the nation. However, Lie Feng is accused of harassment after proposing to a woman he loved. An exemplary soldier who was praised by everyone until yesterday is all of a sudden branded as a despicable villain. Only Xiaoping, who received help from Liu Feng when entering the army, trusts him to the end. Youth is a film depicting harsh but beautiful days of youth. Feng Xiaogang does not create an extreme villain; it is just those days and the world back then that was brutal. Youth tells the story of Liu Feng and Xiaoping from Suizi’s viewpoint after becoming a writer. Their wretched and strange fate. Why should the good suffer more adversity and roam edges? The story of Youth continues to the era of China after opening up. Individuals’ lives do not change a lot even then. Liu Feng and Xiaoping still manage to live in agony, though their wrinkled faces are beautiful and noble as ever. (KIM Bong-suk)

Diretor

FENG Xiaogang

Born in 1958, Beijing, Feng Xiaogang emerged as one of Asia’s most successful commercial directors for his searing black comedies that mapped the lives of common people in a rapidly changing China. His recent film, I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016) won awards at several film festivals.