About

Inspired by a real physical ailment that had debilitated Lee Kang-sheng for months, The River finds Lee’s Hsaio-kang spontaneously agreeing to play a corpse floating in a river in a film shoot (overseen by Hong Kong cinema legend Ann Hui). The tainted water of the Tamsui River causes his to develop agonizing neck pain that pushes him to the brink as he searches for a cure to his condition. While he seeks treatment, his homelife grows fraught. His parents’ (played by Miao Tien and Lu Hsiao-ling, resuming their roles from Rebels of the Neon God 1992) marriage fractures as his mother undertakes an adulterous relationship and his father solicits casual sex at local bathhouses. The River is an uncompromising, hypnotic depiction of alienation and existential anguish.

Ages 18+