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Lin Jianjie’s remarkable debut feature keeps you guessing to the final scene – a thrilling film directed and performed immaculately

This knockout debut feature from Chinese writer-director Lin Jianjie is like some kind of cinematic kinetic mobile, such as the ones artist Alexander Calder designed in the last century; it’s so exquisitely balanced that it’s able to keep reconfiguring itself with the merest breeze into a whole new arrangement of shapes that’s just as pleasing and abstract as the last. Precision and random chance, freestyle inspiration and formal craft are all in constant play here. That perfectly complements the story itself, a parable about a tricky space – the family unit – where talent, ambition and the lottery of genetics and luck all dance around one another, held in place by gravity and desire. It really is that good, and well-worth seeing in a cinema, not just on a small screen at home,...

Drag is not — or at least need not be — political, let alone radical in its politics. But when such artistry is targeted by politicians and policies that aim to make it disappear from public view altogether (whether in the name of country or church or children or any combination thereof), drag artists are left with little recourse than to make their own bodies and bodies of work stand for something. In Agniia Galdanova’s fabulous, if sobering, documentary “Queendom,” audiences are called to witness the begrudging radicalization of Jenna Marvin. The young queer nonbinary drag artist would rather be designing and showcasing her work with little worry. Yet at every turn, the increasingly violent anti-lgbt policies of Putin’s Russia push her to find some way out and through.

A lithe young Russian with no hair on her head and no eyebrows to speak of has painted her entire head pearl white.

Identified only by their last name, Tu, the husband and wife in Brief History of a Family have built their comfortably middle-class life together in accordance with China’s one-child policy. Now, in less restrictive times, a chance to expand their nuclear unit arrives in the form of their teenage son’s mysterious new friend. From shifting perspectives, writer-director Lin Jianjie examines the contained volatility of this four-person configuration. His stylistic choices can be spot-on or self-conscious in their artifice, but his debut feature reveals a talent to watch. With its intriguing performances, narrative restraint and unanswered questions, the movie delivers a strong pull of yearning as well as tantalizing currents of suspicion and dread.

The two boys are schoolmates who apparently have never interacted until the day Wei (Lin Muran) makes an overture of friendship that’s less innocent than it seems. The studious loner Shuo (Sun Xilun) becomes...

Films Boutique has closed a raft of deals on the Chinese movie “Brief History of a Family,” which will play at the Berlinale in the Panorama section.

Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie‘s feature debut, “Brief History of a Family” premiered at Sundance and will be screening for buyers at the EFM as well.

Films Boutique has sold the movie to Benelux (September Films), Italy (Movies Inspired) and Spain (Karma Films).

The drama is set in the aftermath of an incident at the high school attended by Wei, an outgoing only son from a middle-class family, and Shuo, his quiet, perceptive classmate. Wei soon introduces his friend to his father, a cell biologist, and his mother, a former flight attendant. Learning that Shuo comes from a troubled background, Wei’s parents welcome this boy to spend more time in their home. Shuo slowly integrates himself into Wei’s family life and...

Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie’s debut feature “Brief History of a Family,” which is being sold by Films Boutique, has debuted its trailer (below), following its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival.

The film, which will make its European premiere in the Panorama program of the Berlin Film Festival, was received warmly by Variety critic Carlos Aguilar. In the review, Aguilar says the suspenseful drama was “elevated by its consistent visual inventiveness.” He adds that although at first it seems to be the story of a “cunning infiltrator wreaking havoc in an unsuspecting household,” it then “reveals itself as a tale of wish fulfillment for everyone involved.” Aguilar says that it is this approach which “turns Lin’s debut into an engrossing brain-tickler.”

The drama is put in motion by an incident at the high school attended by Wei, an outgoing only son from a middle-class family,...