FANTASIA

"Fantasia offers a lucid, unsentimental vision of contemporary China's hard economic and social condition that recalls Italian neorealism." – Variety

Following her husband's hospitalisation with leukaemia, things begin to fall apart for Tang Min and her children, Lin and Qin. Tang begins begging for money and taking odd jobs to make ends meet, while Qin starts working in a seedy bar, in secret, and eventually moves into escort work; Lin, meanwhile, finds himself ostracised at school, and copes by escaping into fantasy.

Sharing some thematic similarities with director Wang Chao's Luxury Car (MIFF 2006), Fantasia is likewise imbued with his discreet, nonjudgemental touch. Offering an honest picture of the Chinese working class as well as an imaginative study of the psychological effects of facing death, the film is a gentle, articulate social critique of contemporary China.

"Fantasia seems to be a step out of time, a return to the good old days of storytelling techniques and social norms that are no longer there." – Hollywood Reporter