River Road (Chinese: 家在水草丰茂的地方; pinyin: jiā zài shuǐ cǎo fēng mào de dì fāng) is a 2014 Chinese film written and directed by Li Ruijun and starring Tang Long and Guo Songtao. It made its world premiere at the 27th Tokyo International Film Festival in 2014.[1][2][3]
River Road | |
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![]() Film poster | |
Directed by | Li Ruijun |
Screenplay by | Li Ruijun |
Produced by | Yang Cheng Geng Xiaonan Li Ruijun |
Starring | Tang Long Guo Songtao |
Cinematography | Liu Yonghong |
Edited by | Li Ruijun |
Music by | Peyman Yazdanian |
Release dates |
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Running time | 103 minutes |
Country | China |
Languages | Turkic Mandarin |
While their parents graze their sheep far from the town, Adikeer (Tang Long) stays in a boarding school in town and his older brother Bartel (Guo Songtao) lives with their grandfather, a sheep-herder from the Buddhist Yugur ethnic minority. When their father fails to pick them up for summer break and their grandfather dies suddenly, the two brothers embark on a journey with their camels across the vast, dry expanse of Western China alone, in search of their father by following the path of a dried-up river bed.[4][5]
Year | Award | Category | Recipient | Result |
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2014 | 27th [[Tokyo International Film Festival|Tokyo International Film Festival[citation needed]]] | Best Film | River Road | Nominated |
2nd International Film Festival of Colombo[6] | Best Film (Asian Competition) | Won | ||
2015 | 65th [[Berlin International Film Festival|Berlin International Film Festival[citation needed]]] | Best Feature Film | Nominated | |
39th Hong Kong International Film Festival[7] | SIGNIS Award | Won |
With no big stars and a little-known director, River Road has been largely neglected at the box office from the very beginning, even though domestic film critics like Wei Junzi highly recommended it on Sina Weibo on the day of the premiere. Wei wrote, "River Road uses children's visual angel to tell the past and contemporary of a civilization. Poetic, deliberate, and sad, it is a rare work of Chinese films." Director Li admits that he and executive producer Fang Li had foreseen the situation but what he had not expected was that cinemas would be unwilling to showing his film.[citation needed][8]
Films directed by Li Ruijun | |
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