China, United Kingdom｜2015｜DCP｜88’
In Mongolian with Eng sub
Based on The Castle by Franz Kafka. In their daring and fresh take on Kafka’s tale, the snowy European village in the novel is replaced with modern-day Inner Mongolia, where the sun never seems to set. This is a place where actions take place, things happen, people appear without logic or explanations. Land surveyor K’s struggles with a faceless yet omnipresent authority, suspicious characters and entrapment in a bureaucratic labyrinth continue.
A frequent collaborator with Jia Zhangke, who is also a producer on the film, French filmmaker Matthieu Laclau doubled as cinematographer and editor in K. Matthieu Laclau defies reason and coherence with elliptical editing, translating the sense of chaos and illogic at the heart of the book to screen.
2015 Generation, Berlinale
2015 New Directors/New Films
2015 Hong Kong IFF
2015 Taipei FF
Director
Darhad ERDENIBULAG
Darhad ERDENIBULAG was born in 1978 in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. He attended Inner Mongolia College of Art, specializing in Fine Art. He worked as a freelance interior designer and then as a documentary filmmaker for Inner Mongolia Television.
Director
Emyr ap RICHARD
Emyr ap RICHARD was born in 1981 in Carmarthenshire, Wales. He worked for Welsh-language television station, S4C, before moving to live in Inner Mongolia where he worked as a freelance photographer, writer and English-Mongolian translator.
Host
Eric TSANG
Eric TSANG is a Hong Kong-based independent filmmaker. His short film A Thousand Sails (2019) was selected by Sundance Film Festival and won various local and international awards. Funded by The 5th First Feature Film Initiative, He is now preparing for his debut feature The Dinner.
Host
CHAN Tze Woon
CHAN Tze Woon is a Hong Kong filmmaker. Graduated from Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2013. A large-scale occupation in 2014 prompted his first feature-length documentary Yellowing (2016). The film won the Shinsuke Ogawa Award at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, also nominated for the Best Documentary at Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards and selected for IFF Rotterdam. He is now working on his new project Blue Island (work-in-progress), exploring new possibilities in film financing, production format, cinema language and distribution.
Editor
Matthieu LACLAU
Matthieu LACLAU is a French editor who has been working in China since 2008. He studied Film Theory in Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and received his Master’s degree in 2008. In 2013, he won the Golden Horse Best Editing for A Touch of Sin directed by Jia Zhangke and in 2017, the American Chlotrudis Awards Best Editing for Mountains May Depart directed by Jia Zhangke. He edited both feature films and documentaries, and often collaborates with young filmmakers. Recently, he edited Still Tomorrow by Fan Jian, Dragonfly Eyes by Xu Bing, Ash Is Purest White by Jia Zhangke, The Crossing by Bai Xue and A First Farewell by Wang Lina. In 2019, he completed the editing of two feature films selected in the Official Selection of the Cannes FF: The Wild Goose Lake directed by Diao Yinan (Competition), Nina Wu directed by Midi Z (Un Certain Regard) In 2020, he’s nominated for the Taipei Film Awards best editor for his work on Nina Wu and finished the editing of The Best Is Yet to Come, both selected in Venice FF (Orizzonti) and TIFF.