This Wednesday, June 10, we’ll be showing the film Petition (Chinese language with English subtitles), director Zhao Liang’s eye-opening and acclaimed documentary that was screened at Cannes in 2009. Made over a span of 12 years, it follows those who travel to Beijing in the timeworn Chinese tradition of seeking redress for local injustice. The film is simultaneously a portrait of contemporary hope and heartbreak.

As NY Times film reviewer AO Scott writes:

“Petition” is an anthology of Kafkaesque anecdotes, most of them fragmentary, but what gives it shape and almost unbearable dramatic weight are the handful of stories the director pursues in detail. The most sustained of these — the stuff of a tragic novel — involves a woman named Qi, who has come from the countryside after her husband’s death. She is joined by their daughter, Xiaojuan, and it is only late in the film, after they have been separated and reunited, that you realize how long their ordeal has lasted, and how terrible it has been.

Wednesday June 10, 8 pm
20 RMB