Shimen

In their second collaboration, Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji offer a complex, heartrending portrait of a young Chinese woman searching for love and identity at a time when everything can and will be bought and sold. Lynn (Honggui Yao) is a 20-year-old college student. But she is caught between her boyfriend Zhang (Long Liu) and her parents (Xiaoxiong Huang and Zilong Xiao), all of whom have diverging plans for her. Zhang insists that Lynn take English classes to improve her marketability. 
But Lynn’s mother, a doctor at a women’s clinic, wants to take advantage of her daughter’s unwanted pregnancy to get her out of a jam, as she is being extorted by a mob boss (Ciu Chi) who blames her for his cousin’s stillbirth. As we follow Lynn through the nine months of her pregnancy, we see her try to pick up odd jobs, mostly pertaining to the commodification of her youth and beauty. Whether it’s trying to sell her eggs to wealthy women looking to conceive, or fulfilling her ambition of becoming a flight attendant (“a pretty girl’s job,” one man remarks), Lynn’s primary currency is her body. And when Covid-19 breaks out, the price of life shifts even more dramatically, becoming a true buyers’ market. (Michael Sicinski)

Huang Ji, Otsuka Ryuji: TRACE (2013), BEN NIAO (2017)

Huang Ji: UNDERGROUND (2007), THE WARMTH OF ORANGE PEEL (2010, K), JIDAN HE SHITOU (2012)

Otsuka Ryuji: THE BEIJING ANTS (2014)