Directed by Na Jiazuo • 2021 • China
Starring Liu Jiuxiao, Huang Miyi, Sha Baoliang

An at once gritty and intoxicatingly stylized portrait of a group of outcasts struggling to survive in a fading riverside town, STREETWISE unfolds in 2004 in Zhenwu, one of the many small villages in the Sichuan province where the young people who remain are those who could not leave. It’s there that Dongzi (Li Jiuxiao), an aimless young man burdened by his alcoholic father’s costly medical treatments, ends up working as a debt collector for the local mafia. Further complicating things, Dongzi is in love with the boss’s wife (Huang Miyi), a troubled tattoo-parlor owner who dreams of divorcing her husband and fleeing Zhenwu. Bathed in an alluring neon glow, this breathtaking nocturnal neonoir radiates a woozy, fatalistic romanticism.