Directed by Zhang Lü • 2023 • China
Starring Xin Baiqing, Huang Yao, Tian Zhuangzhuang

Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing), a middle-aged food critic, is drifting through the local eateries of vibrant Beijing with his younger photographer colleague Oyang (Huang Yao). A divorcé with a six-year-old daughter who has been estranged from his father for decades, he is looking for a new perspective on life while reconsidering his failings as a father, a son, and a lover. While the seasons come and go, people get together and move apart. Only one thing will remain the same: the White Pagoda where they all meet sooner or later. Costarring major Fifth Generation filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang (THE HORSE THIEF, THE BLUE KITE), this rich, profoundly sensitive rumination on the possibility of human connection achieves a novelistic expansiveness as it surveys the ebbs and flows of a life shaped by loss, yearning, and regret.