Kuang ye shi dai

RESURRECTION begins in a future where humanity has surrendered the ability to dream in exchange for immortality. One creature, however, remains caught in the fading illusions of the dream world. When a mysterious woman enters his dreams in search of the truth, their encounter opens the way to a journey across time, memory and a century of cinema. From silent-film expressionism and film noir to crime stories and a feverish romance at the turn of the millennium, the film continually changes its appearance. Jackson Yee re-emerges in different roles and eras as the dreamer moves through worlds governed less by conventional narrative than by sensation and association. Shu Qi accompanies this shifting odyssey as the woman capable of seeing through his illusions. The chapters correspond to the senses of Buddhist thought—sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, with the mind completing the six—and simultaneously move through different periods of Chinese history and film history. Bi Gan uses these changing forms not simply as references but as part of the film's own language: characters, genres and images are repeatedly transformed as one dream gives way to another. The final passage reaches New Year's Eve 1999 and unfolds in one of the extended takes for which Bi Gan has become known. Past and future, memory and desire converge as the twentieth century approaches its end. Rather than resolving its mysteries, RESURRECTION allows them to remain suspended within a constantly changing cinematic dream. RESURRECTION premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where Bi Gan received the Special Prize. Spanning 160 minutes and a century of imagined cinematic history, his third feature is an ambitious science-fiction odyssey in which dreaming becomes an act of resistance—and cinema a way of keeping those dreams alive.