Bi Gan’s latest film, Resurrection, premiered in competition at Cannes, where it won the Prix Spécial, and is in theaters now through Janus Films. Born in June 1989 in Kaili, China, Bi Gan made his feature debut with Kaili Blues (2015), which was selected in 70 festivals, and received the Best Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Locarno Festival and the prestigious “Best New Director Award” at the Golden Horse Awards. In 2018, his second feature film, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a monumental fresco in 3D, premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. Bi Gan directed an ambitious short film in 2022 called A Short Story, told through the eyes of a cat.
It’s been a very busy year because of Resurrection, so I didn’t watch that many new films, especially in the cinema, as I simply didn’t have the opportunity to. The first film that I’ve seen this year that comes to mind is Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice. I like that film, especially the ending.
I actually saw No Other Choice online, rather than on the big screen. I was in our office and my colleagues decided to find a film to watch, and they landed on that particular one. I walked past them as they were starting to watch, and then I decided to sit down and join them, so we could watch the film together. At the time, I was rewatching a lot of films by Hitchcock, and I felt that I could see some connections between Hitchcock’s films and No Other Choice, so I stayed to watch the whole thing.
I think Hitchcock and Director Park have a lot in common in the way they deal with the idea of the feelings and the concept of suspense. This is something that is hard to grasp, but both directors somehow find a way to understand it, to dissect it in such a way that you will resonate with their obsession with this kind of suspense. I really consider Director Park to be one of the great and most important filmmakers of the present moment, and also a master of his craft. And I’ve enjoyed watching his films, especially the ones from the past few years. I think that he and Bong Joon-ho have made some of the most important films of the past two or three years.
Because of the work that I do and the festivals that I go to, there are opportunities for me to exchange ideas and mutual admiration of each other’s work with my fellow filmmakers. However, due to my personality, I am not someone who shares that very freely with other filmmakers, so probably a lot of filmmakers don’t even know that I’m a big fan of their work.
I really like to go to the cinema to watch new films, but just because I was so busy this past year, I did not do it nearly so much. But when I finally had the chance to go to the cinema to watch F1 with Brad Pitt, I was very excited to see it. It’s an old school-style film and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I actually fell asleep during F1, in a part that felt like it was dealing with very familiar tropes, but I really got into it during the climax of the film, especially the long sequence which is from the point of view of Brad Pitt’s character, where he’s driving the car. I was very impressed and thoroughly entertained by that.
I usually consume films like F1 purely from an audience standpoint, rather than thinking about the artistic or technical aspects of the movie. I’m a ticket buyer going in there trying to enjoy a film because of the story, because of the film itself. I don’t really think about it in relation to my own filmmaking, because to me, they’re two completely different worlds. In terms of the films that I enjoy to watch and the films that I make, I think of those as two completely different spheres as well.
Another film I saw in 2025 was Caught by the Tides by Jia Zhangke. It was one of the very few instances that I actually watched a film in China and was so moved and touched by it. It was because of the way that Jia used the footage that he had captured for other films in the past 20 years or so, and then was able to give new meaning and new life to it. It resulted in something that is, in my opinion, a great and wonderful film.
