The year 2015 marked the first time the name Bi Gan became well-known. With his debut feature Kaili Blues, he won the Best Emerging Director award at the Locarno Film Festival at the age of 26. Defined by its poetic language and an astonishing 41-minute-long take, the film established Bi Gan as a “genius director” and a rising star of Chinese cinema.
Bi Gan premiered his sophomore feature Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2018. This time, he adopted an even bolder creative approach, guiding audiences midway through the film to put on 3D glasses and enter a dreamlike cinematic world sustained by an even more elaborate long take. Beyond the film itself, however, what attracted more widespread attention was its marketing promotion. A more mainstream promotional campaign brought a large number of first-time arthouse viewers into cinemas. Although the film achieved remarkable box-office success, the gap between the expectations set by its marketing and the film’s highly experimental nature led to a backlash in public reception.
Seven years later, Bi Gan returned with his third feature, Resurrection at the Cannes Film Festival. Departing from the recurring setting of his hometown Kaili, the film celebrates the 120 years of Chinese cinema history through six stories structured in distinct artistic styles, echoing different cinematic eras while maintaining Bi Gan’s unmistakable sense of rhythm, atmosphere, and emotional ambiguity. It is his most ambitious and outward-looking work to date.
Much like Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Resurrection arrived with significant attention, backed by major international festivals and a high-profile cast. Its box-office performance in China earned over £20 million, which was exceptional in its category. For many viewers, however, the film’s complex artistic expression made it a challenging experience, and its reception among mainstream audiences remained divided. Yet this very tension between difficulty and popularity is what makes the film noteworthy.
Even so, the fact that an arthouse film was able to draw such a large Chinese audience into cinemas remains deeply hopeful. What ultimately stands out is not whether Resurrection conforms to mainstream taste, but that it invites such a large audience to encounter a radically non-conventional cinematic experience in the first place. At a time when arthouse cinema is increasingly marginalised in China, Bi Gan has undoubtedly emerged as one of the most significant Chinese auteur directors, following big names such as Wong Kar-wai and Jia Zhangke.
Distributed by Trinity CineAsia, Resurrection is set to be released in the UK and Ireland on March 13, 2026, with preview screenings available from February 25.
Lou: I watched the final cut of Resurrection a few days ago, and compared with the version that premiered at film festivals, it feels easier to follow. Could you share what adjustments you made and the reason behind them?
Bi Gan:
The version we are going to release internationally will be the same final cut version we screened in China. We did some editing work after we premiered at Cannes. A lot of the visual-effects-related material couldn’t be completed in time before. Although it’s not the shots with big CGI effects, many sequences required coordination across departments, special props, and additional post-production work. We didn’t have enough time to finish, so some of the footage couldn’t be used. After we returned from Cannes, we finally got the time to complete those shots. Once those were done, I reorganised the story a bit as well.
Lou: In Resurrection, you shift focus from personal memories in your previous works like Kaili Blues and Long Days Journey Into Nights, to a story framed around a century of cinema history. What inspired this change toward such a high-concept structure?
Bi Gan:
I didn‘t change much, it’s the world that has changed. If the world stayed like it was five or six years ago, my view of filmmaking probably would stay the same as well. But the issues people discuss every day, the tension between people, and the things people are interested in right now are all changing. So when I made my third feature, I was thinking about how to address all these new issues I see now. I think I’m still the same person, but the world has changed a lot.
Lou: I heard that you are already preparing your next film. I wonder whether it will continue exploring themes similar to Resurrection, or will you return to a more personal narrative?
Bi Gan:
I think my most personal works were my very early short films. Starting from Kaili Blues, my films entered a more artistic narrative system, and it did include universal emotions. In Resurrection, maybe it’s because the mass audience are not that familiar with certain historic periods so they feel a strong connection between the film and the film history. But beneath that, the film also contains a deep affection to this land, and it may take time for foreign audiences to understand that.
As for the next film—yes, I’m writing it now. People keep asking about it, but I don’t know how soon it’ll start. If I said it will come out soon I think most of my fans won’t believe it. Though I think it’ll come out much faster than this one, which took me seven years. In these seven years most of the time I was slowly processing this changing world. Tremendous changes happened in the past 7 years, many contemporary topics like the rise of AI, new social media are what we discuss everyday. I felt quite distant with the world in these seven years. But starting from Resurrection, and moving into the next one, I think the distance will shorten.
It’s hard to say how fast or slow it will take to make the next new film, but I am now actively working on its story.
Lou: In some ways, Resurrection feels like six short films woven into one. I’ve always liked your short films, for example A Short Story. What’s the biggest difference for you between making short films and making a feature like this? Which format do you enjoy more?
Bi Gan:
I definitely enjoy making films with more freedom. But with the features I’ve shot so far, there are many challenges and restrictions. These force me to devote a lot of energy to solving problems. I’d enjoy it more if I were only there to direct.
And even making A Short Story is not easy. I spent three months preparing it and shot it in a week. There are ten scenes in that film. However, when it becomes a project like Resurrection, you easily have over a hundred scenes. Once it becomes a big scale production, whether it’s a regular feature or a feature with several short chapters doesn’t make a big difference in their difficulties.
For Resurrection, the main challenge was that every chapter required completely new sets, props, and designs, so we couldn’t reuse anything. We didn’t expect it to be that overwhelming before the shooting. But once we finished one chapter and moved to the next one, we found the art department couldn’t keep up. Everything had to start from scratch again.
If we lowered the standards, we could’ve just taken random props from our warehouses. But that wouldn’t work for me nor for the production designer. So we tried to make adjustments to some old props to make it work for this film, which takes a lot of time as well. For example, when shooting the opium-den scene, our costume designer Wen-Ying Huang had to borrow props from when Flowers of Shanghai was filmed. Because the film requires props from very specific historical periods, a lot of the old props simply wouldn’t work. When we moved to the next chapter, our overall energy dropped a lot because all the energy we had was already poured into the former part, and now we need to start again.
My next film will not have this problem, because it’s not five films anymore, it’s finally just one film. That will be a bit easier. But as long as you have your standards for aesthetics and production design, you won’t be able to really relax. People think making Kaili Blues is easy, but that film took me a lot of energy, too.
Lou: Did you develop the 6 chapters in a particular order? Which chapter was the easiest or hardest to create? Do you have a favourite?
Bi Gan:
We shot the fourth chapter (the “sense of smell”) first because the character in that story is much older than our leading actor, Jackson Yee, so we wanted to start from that. Also, that story is closest to the present days so it’s easier to shoot. You have many references in costumes, sets, and props, so this chapter was planned as the entry point.
I love all of the stories in the film. Each of them represents a different layer of the soul, expressed through different senses.
Lou: Long takes have become a signature of your work, but I heard you didn’t initially plan to use them in this film. Do you feel any pressure to include long takes now? Do they emerge from the story, or do you conceive the shot first and build around it?
Bi Gan:
I definitely don’t feel pressure to shoot a long take because the goal of making a film is not “to shoot a long take.”
In Resurrection, what’s moving in that story is certainly not because of the long take. It’s the youthful passion, the purity, the recklessness that makes you emotional. But to reach that emotion, you need techniques like long takes to support. When I make films, I never start with thinking whether I should use a long take. But when it becomes necessary, I won’t hesitate to use one. Our team is very skilled at handling long, continuous shots. We’re not afraid to shoot a long take, and we don’t insist on using it.
Lou: When Long Day’s Journey Into Night came out, the marketing sparked controversy but also drew many non–art-film fans to the cinema. For Resurrection’s release, we saw a similar reaction from the audience as well. Do you expect your film to influence audiences who are not used to watching art films? Do you hope to bring some kind of change?
Bi Gan:
To me, since Kaili Blues till now, I’ve never had a strong desire to “change someone.” Everyone’s living environment shapes their situation, their way of thinking, and expression. I certainly neither tend to change anyone with a film nor like the idea of it.
Watching films shouldn’t be a burden, it should be an easy thing to do. Yesterday an audience came to the screening. He was just an ordinary viewer, and didn’t really watch arthouse films. But he was facing decisions about exams in his life. After watching, he told me that he felt very comforted. I told him that comfort doesn’t necessarily come from this film specifically. Any good film is capable of having this effect on people. Because a masterpiece touches upon simple human emotions and the meaning of existence. Once a film addresses those things, it gives back to the viewer.
People go to the cinema because their life is full of doubts, pressures, joys and sorrows. Spending one or two hours in the theater can help to reflect on your life through the mirror of cinema. But films are never about changing anyone. Life is long, change doesn’t come from one film.
Lou: Dreams are always a recurring theme in your films. I’m curious if you are a person who dreams often? What kind of dreams do you have?
Bi Gan:
A lot of people have asked me about this. I don’t really pay attention to whether I dream or not. My daily job is to deal with hallucinations, so I don’t record my dreams like some writers might do. Most of my dreams are probably related to work, which I don’t keep track of. But dreams will continue to be a very important medium or tool in themes that I want to explore in the future.
