The screening on 20 March will be introduced by Tony Rayns, whose long-standing support of Jia Zhangke, from festival exposure to sustained critical advocacy and English subtitling, played a crucial role in bringing Jia’s work to international attention.
As the concluding chapter of Jia Zhangke’s celebrated Hometown Trilogy (following Xiao Wu and Platform), Unknown Pleasures is Jia’s first digitally shot feature. Named after a pop song by Richie Jen that recurs throughout, the film is saturated with the media landscape of its time - television, radio, pop music, and cinema in the background - lending it a strong documentary and archival quality.
Set in the year 2000 in Datong, a declining industrial city in northern China, Unknown Pleasures follows two aimless young men, Bin Bin and Xiao Ji, adrift in boredom and unfulfilled desire. Unemployed and disconnected, they drift between pool halls, streets, and cheap interiors, dreaming of escape without the means to pursue it. Xiao Ji becomes fixated on Qiao Qiao, a nightclub dancer whose allure remains out of reach, while Bin Bin flirts with the fantasy of a criminal act that might give his life meaning. Through their stalled lives and quiet frustrations, the film offers a stark portrait of a generation left behind by rapid economic change, suspended between pop-cultural aspiration and lived limitation.
