Film Movement Classics has acquired three Chinese-language films restored in 4K: Hou Hsiao-Hsien‘s A City of Sadness, as well as Raise the Red Lantern and To Live by director Zhang Yimou.
The acquisition includes North American rights for all three films, as well as UK and Ireland for Raise the Red Lantern and To Live. The North American distributor has announced a theatrical roll-out, VOD, and streaming plans for the trio of movies.
Director Hou’s A City of Sadness originally released in 1989 and is considered a landmark of modern cinema. Directed by one of the most prominent figures of the Taiwanese New Wave, A City of Sadness follows the Lin family amid Japan’s surrender in 1945.
Raise the Red Lantern stars Gong Li in a powerful portrait of repression in 1920s China. Adapted from Su Tong’s novel Wives and Concubines, Zhang’s film earned an Academy Award nomination as well as the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival in 1991.
Li and Zhang’s next collaboration, To Live, chronicles the Xu family across decades in 20th-century China. A historic epic that spans the Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, To Live was awarded by the Cannes Film Festival in 1994 and remains one of the greatest films of the decade.
