VIFF 2025 | Bi Gan Dreams A Cinematic 'Resurrection'

"The secret to eternal life is to no longer dream!"

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—Resurrection (狂野时代 aka Wild Times), visionary Chinese artist turned director Bi Gan's ambitious dreamscape odyssey of surrealist sci-fi slow cinema, is structured into six disparate but interconnected chapters, each revolving around one of the Buddhist senses, including the "mind." Set in a far future where most people no longer dream and, as a result, can live forever, things start off in a German expressionist style before transitioning into distinct twentieth-century cinematic eras in China.

Starring Jackson Yee as a "Deliriant," one who can still dream but has been turned monstrous (think Nosferatu) while hunted down by one of the "Other Ones," Miss Shu (Shu Qi), he seeks refuge in the past in defiance of the future's immortal status quo of accepted reality. What follows is a dizzying exploration of the self throughout time and space that culminates in a glorious long-take final chapter set on New Year's Eve in 1999 that's ripped straight out of popular, '90s-era Hong Kong crime dramas.

Audiences move from genre-specific dream states chapter to chapter as Resurrection unfolds a monumentally ambitious science-fiction saga told across centuries of its dream world. Gan's stylish conception of human experience is as awe-inspiring as it is manic in its bold artifice, realized in the medium of film language. It's an artistically transcendent Chinese love letter to artistry, creativity, and cinema.

Resurrection screened at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Showcase series at Fifth Avenue Cinemas and the SFU Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema. It also screens at The Cinematheque starting January 7th.


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