New US Trailer for Jia Zhangke’s ‘Caught by the Tides’ with Zhao Tao
by Alex Billington
April 18, 2025
Source: YouTube
“Carefully crafted to break your heart. Simply stunning.” Janus Films has debuted the official US trailer for Caught by the Tides, the latest creation of beloved Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke. This premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival last year and critics loved it there. It’s a unique new creation that is made up of various bits of footage from his previous films and other projects. He shot a few new scenes to add in as well. A Chinese woman lives for herself in silence, celebrating the prosperous Belle Epoque with songs and dance. Caught by the Tides follows his eternally magnetic muse Zhao Tao across decades in China. “Telling a love story in three parts spanning more than twenty years, Jia offers a summing up before he turns a new page.” The film also co-stars Zhubin Li as the mysteriously elusive lover… She never speaks a single line of dialogue in the film, as it follows her strolling through an evolving, changing China. “The always captivating Zhao Tao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change: of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas.” The film is a must watch for any/every cinephile – catch it showing in art house theaters throughout the summer.
Here’s the official US trailer (+ poster) for Jia Zhangke’s film Caught by the Tides, direct from YouTube:
The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous Caught by the Tides. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences—Jia’s Caught by the Tides is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story. The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. Caught by the Tides is written and directed by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, director of the films Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures, Still Life, 24 City, A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart, and Ash Is Purest White previously, as well as the docs Dong, Wuyong, Yulu, and Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue. Produced by Casper Liang Jiayan, Shôzô Ichiyama. It first premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival last year. Janus Films will debut Caught by the Tides in select US theaters on May 9th, 2025 this summer.
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