Cannes 2024: Chinese director Jia Zhangke, film festival veteran, on capturing 20 years of change in Caught by the Tides

Jia Zhangke’s 2024 Cannes Film Festival entry is a blend of footage shot between 2001 and the pandemic, and unlike anything he has brought to the event before

The filmmaker talks about how his movie traces the changes he saw in China in the years it took to film, and his relationship with its star, his wife Zhao Tao

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Veteran Chinese director Jia Zhangke at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The 53-year-old talks about his new film Caught by the Tides, which captures the changes he witnessed over the two decades it took to make. Photo: Reuters

Published: 4:15am, 23 May 2024Updated: 11:08am, 23 May 2024

Something old, something new, Jia Zhangke’s latest film, Caught by the Tides, is one of the most curious works to emerge at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The Chinese writer-director is a veteran of the world’s most famous cinematic showcase – his last film, 2018’s Ash Is Purest White was his fifth in competition in Cannes – but he has never brought anything quite like this to the Croisette.

Footage shot over a number of years – as far back as 2001 – is intertwined with a new narrative that takes audiences into China’s Covid-19 pandemic in Caught by the Tides, which marks another strong collaboration between Jia and his wife and muse, Zhao Tao, a regular in his films since 2000’s Platform.

Typical of Jia’s methods, Zhao’s introduction to viewers of the film comes via repurposed material from their second feature together, 2002’s tale of disaffected youth Unknown Pleasures.

Here Zhao plays Qiaoqiao, a model living in the coal mining city of Datong in northern China whose boyfriend, Guo Bin (Li Zhubin), becomes her manager.