Writer-director Pema Tseden tells this story of a clash between modernity and tradition as a woman is dismayed to find she is pregnant
The latest of Pema Tseden’s empathic and intimate portraits of Tibetan pastoral life begins with an intriguing cloudiness. A misty, blurry view of lush farmland accompanied by childlike chatter is seen through the inflated skin of two “balloons”, which are revealed to be two blown-up condoms. This mix of tranquillity, playfulness and a touch of melancholy becomes the evocative thread that runs through this leisurely film where opposing doctrines are explored in a fascinating, non-didactic fashion.
Revolving around a ram-rearing family headed by two patriarchs, the film is, at first, deceptively male-centric. Dargye (Jinpa), the husband, talks often of buying virile stock for breeding. Staying in the background, his wife, Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo), is smilingly docile – yet her character slowly becomes the film’s central figure,...
The latest of Pema Tseden’s empathic and intimate portraits of Tibetan pastoral life begins with an intriguing cloudiness. A misty, blurry view of lush farmland accompanied by childlike chatter is seen through the inflated skin of two “balloons”, which are revealed to be two blown-up condoms. This mix of tranquillity, playfulness and a touch of melancholy becomes the evocative thread that runs through this leisurely film where opposing doctrines are explored in a fascinating, non-didactic fashion.
Revolving around a ram-rearing family headed by two patriarchs, the film is, at first, deceptively male-centric. Dargye (Jinpa), the husband, talks often of buying virile stock for breeding. Staying in the background, his wife, Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo), is smilingly docile – yet her character slowly becomes the film’s central figure,...
- 9/20/2021
- by Phuong Le
- The Guardian - Film News
Human: China’s HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ Production Slate at FilMart
URL: HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ at FilMart
Seo Head: HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ at FilMart
Key phrase: HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ at FilMart
By Vivienne Chow
China’s HiShow Entertainment has unveiled a slate of new productions ahead of the first online edition of Hong Kong FilMart. Its lineup includes the highly-anticipated series “Game Changer.”
Scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter this year, “Game Changer” is one of a handful of mainland Chinese drama series that tells a contemporary urban story, with “fast-paced American-style” storytelling that is intended to appeal to overseas audiences, according to Wang Haiyi, HiShow’s head of the international business.
Starring heartthrob Huang Xiaoming as a journalist-turned-publicist alongside Tan Zhuo, Cai Wenjing and Zhang Bo, the 40-episode series dives into the world of public relations with stories revolving around the crisis management arm of a PR firm.
URL: HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ at FilMart
Seo Head: HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ at FilMart
Key phrase: HiShow Unveils ‘Game Changer’ at FilMart
By Vivienne Chow
China’s HiShow Entertainment has unveiled a slate of new productions ahead of the first online edition of Hong Kong FilMart. Its lineup includes the highly-anticipated series “Game Changer.”
Scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter this year, “Game Changer” is one of a handful of mainland Chinese drama series that tells a contemporary urban story, with “fast-paced American-style” storytelling that is intended to appeal to overseas audiences, according to Wang Haiyi, HiShow’s head of the international business.
Starring heartthrob Huang Xiaoming as a journalist-turned-publicist alongside Tan Zhuo, Cai Wenjing and Zhang Bo, the 40-episode series dives into the world of public relations with stories revolving around the crisis management arm of a PR firm.
- 8/26/2020
- by Vivienne Chow
- Variety Film + TV
After roaming for more than a year on the international festival circuit, “Jinpa” — the latest effort from Tibetan director Pema Tseden — has finally launched a limited run in U.S. art houses, where it might find an appreciative if occasionally perplexed audience for its idiosyncratic mix of deadpan wit and understated mysticism. The movie is by repeatedly hinting at a potential for melodramatic upheaval. Ultimately, however, Tseden finds an audaciously different way to pull the rug out from under us.
Set in the rugged territory of the Kekexili Plateau, an isolated Tibetan region with an average elevation of more than 16,000 meters, “Jinpa” begins by introducing us to its title character, a grizzled long-distance trucker (played by an actor whose name also is Jinpa), as he traverses a seemingly endless road across a spectacularly barren landscape. He appears genuinely upset by the prospect of bad karma when he accidentally rolls over,...
Set in the rugged territory of the Kekexili Plateau, an isolated Tibetan region with an average elevation of more than 16,000 meters, “Jinpa” begins by introducing us to its title character, a grizzled long-distance trucker (played by an actor whose name also is Jinpa), as he traverses a seemingly endless road across a spectacularly barren landscape. He appears genuinely upset by the prospect of bad karma when he accidentally rolls over,...
- 2/24/2020
- by Joe Leydon
- Variety Film + TV
Wang Lina’s A First Farewell took awards for best director and best actress.
Pema Tsedan’s Balloon was named best picture while Wang Lina’s A First Farewell took awards for best director and best actress (Sonam Wangmo) at the first Golden Coconut Awards at China’s Hainan Island International Film Festival (Hiiff) on Sunday night (December 8).
Both films, in the Tibetan language and Uighur language respectively, coincidentally touch on ethnic minority issues in China.
The Golden Coconut Awards are a new addition this year, handing out cash prizes in 10 categories among films selected for the festival’s international competition for feature,...
Pema Tsedan’s Balloon was named best picture while Wang Lina’s A First Farewell took awards for best director and best actress (Sonam Wangmo) at the first Golden Coconut Awards at China’s Hainan Island International Film Festival (Hiiff) on Sunday night (December 8).
Both films, in the Tibetan language and Uighur language respectively, coincidentally touch on ethnic minority issues in China.
The Golden Coconut Awards are a new addition this year, handing out cash prizes in 10 categories among films selected for the festival’s international competition for feature,...
- 12/9/2019
- by 1100978¦Silvia Wong¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Straying quite far away in terms of aesthetics from the multi-awarded “Tharlo”, Pema Tseden directs a much more approachable film that lingers between the road movie and the western, before it concludes in complete deliriousness. Let us take things from the beginning, though.
“Jinpa” is screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival
The story takes place in Kekexili, a secluded area in Tibet which is considered the largest and highest plateau in the world. The protagonist, Jinpa, is a truck driver dressed like a rock star, who listens to classical music in his car as he carries his cargo across the barren roads of the area. Two occurrences, however, completely change his fate. The first one takes place when he hits a stray sheep on the road, killing it and eventually taking it with him, and the second when he picks up a young man who is hitching a ride,...
“Jinpa” is screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival
The story takes place in Kekexili, a secluded area in Tibet which is considered the largest and highest plateau in the world. The protagonist, Jinpa, is a truck driver dressed like a rock star, who listens to classical music in his car as he carries his cargo across the barren roads of the area. Two occurrences, however, completely change his fate. The first one takes place when he hits a stray sheep on the road, killing it and eventually taking it with him, and the second when he picks up a young man who is hitching a ride,...
- 11/19/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
As a novelist and a filmmaker, Pema Tseden is probably one of the key figures in the contemporary Tibetan culture. His newest film, “Balloon” (“Qiqiu” in the original) is kinda of connected to his previous works, especially with “Tharlo” (2015) and his previous award-winning Venice title “Jinpa” (2018), at least through his “house actor” Jinpa and the topics revolving around Buddhist religion, mysticism and philosophy. However, “Balloon” has another, quite this-worldly, realistic layer to it: the examination of One-child Policy from a distinctly Tibetan point of view. The film, like its predecessor, has premiered recently at Orizzonti competition of the 76th edition of Venice Film Festival.
“Balloon” is screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival
The story follows a family living alone on the vast plateau surrounded by their prized sheep. It consists of an ailing grandfather (Konchok), a father named Dargye (Jinpa), a mother Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo) and their two mischievous...
“Balloon” is screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival
The story follows a family living alone on the vast plateau surrounded by their prized sheep. It consists of an ailing grandfather (Konchok), a father named Dargye (Jinpa), a mother Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo) and their two mischievous...
- 11/14/2019
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
The American Film Institute unveiled their lineup for AFI Fest’s World Cinema and the inaugural Documentary section. The fest will take place November 14-21 in Los Angeles.
The world cinema section will include five international feature film Oscar submissions and 16 titles from 19 countries. This includes the Los Angeles premiere of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life as well as Levan Akin’s And We Danced from Sweden, Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone from Canada, Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi from Poland, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor from Italy and Cornlieu’s The Whistlers from Romania.
On the documentary side, the fest will include Alex Gibney’s Citizen K as well as Desert One from two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple. Other films in the doc lineup include Bikram: Yoga, Guru, Predator from Eva Orner, Jolie Coiffure from Rosine Mbakam and The Human Factor from Dror Moreh.
Read AFI Fest’s...
The world cinema section will include five international feature film Oscar submissions and 16 titles from 19 countries. This includes the Los Angeles premiere of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life as well as Levan Akin’s And We Danced from Sweden, Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone from Canada, Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi from Poland, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor from Italy and Cornlieu’s The Whistlers from Romania.
On the documentary side, the fest will include Alex Gibney’s Citizen K as well as Desert One from two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple. Other films in the doc lineup include Bikram: Yoga, Guru, Predator from Eva Orner, Jolie Coiffure from Rosine Mbakam and The Human Factor from Dror Moreh.
Read AFI Fest’s...
- 10/15/2019
- by Dino-Ray Ramos
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s hard to think of anything that’s as inherently ridiculous and quite literally vital as condoms. Nothing more than a little piece of latex, but what moral, social, religious implications it carries. These very human complications of birth control lie at the heart of Tibetan director Pema Tseden’s delicate, thoughtful drama Balloon.
Set in the mythically pristine highlands of Tibet, the film revolves around a sheep-rearing household carrying on a simple, earthbound lifestyle you can imagine has existed for centuries. Man of the house Dargye (played by Pema Tseden regular Jinpa) is a rustic, steak-eating farmhand with a deep, unspoken love for his family, consisting of unassertive hausfrau wife Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo), non-stop scripture-chanting old dad, and three sons – a limit under the family planning policy enforced by China since the 80’s. One day, the two youngest boys are playing with their balloons and get chastised by...
Set in the mythically pristine highlands of Tibet, the film revolves around a sheep-rearing household carrying on a simple, earthbound lifestyle you can imagine has existed for centuries. Man of the house Dargye (played by Pema Tseden regular Jinpa) is a rustic, steak-eating farmhand with a deep, unspoken love for his family, consisting of unassertive hausfrau wife Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo), non-stop scripture-chanting old dad, and three sons – a limit under the family planning policy enforced by China since the 80’s. One day, the two youngest boys are playing with their balloons and get chastised by...
- 10/7/2019
- by Zhuo-Ning Su
- The Film Stage
The Notebook is covering Tiff with an on-going correspondence between critics Fernando F. Croce, Kelley Dong, and editor Daniel Kasman.BalloonDear Danny and Fern,The most important thing is to have fun! When the excitement lapses, for whatever reason, I think a lot about sleep—not the sleep I’ve lost (there are no regrets), but how swiftly sleep arrives at the end of a continuous stream of movies. I’ve been rushing in and out of dreams all day, trying to divvy the material so that pools of plots do not spill into each other. What I especially seek in the films seen here is lucidity, to alert the mind when the senses have been clouded by circumstance. Of course, both the thrills and bores encountered in the theatre take on new meanings (and higher stakes) when considered within the context of ongoing institutional initiatives. I mentioned last year...
- 9/8/2019
- MUBI
Sheep are back again in Pema Tseden’s seventh feature film “Balloon” that premiered in the Horizon’s sidebar of the Venice International Film festival, and they feel like the inseparable part of the brilliant cast. In this family drama set up in Tibet’s grassland, three family generations are trying to come to terms with an unexpected situation that make them question consequences of either of potential decisions. In his script based on the novel composed of three stories he penned after his original script was rejected by censors, Tseden doesn’t disappoint with his reluctance to stay away from final answers and clear ending, leaving the viewer to ponder what comes after the curtain has closed.
The title roles are played by actors we recognize from Pseden’s road western “Jinpa” that also competed in last year’s Horizon selection, where it bagged the award for Best screenplay.
The title roles are played by actors we recognize from Pseden’s road western “Jinpa” that also competed in last year’s Horizon selection, where it bagged the award for Best screenplay.
- 9/7/2019
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
As a novelist and a filmmaker, Pema Tseden is probably one of the key figures in the contemporary Tibetan culture. His newest film, “Balloon” (“Qiqiu” in the original) is kinda connected to his previous works, especially with “Tharlo” (2015) and his previous award-winning Venice title “Jinpa” (2018), at least through his “house actor” Jinpa and the topics revolving around Buddhist religion, mysticism and philosophy. However, “Balloon” has another, quite this-worldly, realistic layer to it: the examination of One-child Policy from a distinctly Tibetan point of view. The film, like its predecessor, has premiered recently at Orizzonti competition of the 76th edition of Venice Film Festival.
“Balloon” is screening at
Venice International Film Festival 2019
The story follows a family living alone on the vast plateau surrounded by their prized sheep. It consists of an ailing grandfather (Konchok), a father named Dargye (Jinpa), a mother Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo) and their two mischievous sons who...
“Balloon” is screening at
Venice International Film Festival 2019
The story follows a family living alone on the vast plateau surrounded by their prized sheep. It consists of an ailing grandfather (Konchok), a father named Dargye (Jinpa), a mother Drolkar (Sonam Wangmo) and their two mischievous sons who...
- 9/6/2019
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
As a Tibetan director dedicated to illuminating, with love and insight, the everyday culture of his contested homeland, navigating China’s labyrinthine and often-changing filmmaking approval processes cannot be an easy task. And yet, over the course of now seven films, despite or possibly because of those restrictions, Pema Tseden has amassed the most quietly inspiring of filmographies, his novelist’s eye yielding storytelling far richer than just ethnography or social observation. His beautiful, funny and tragic newest film, “Balloon,” which follows the trail of his last, “Jinpa,” in premiering in the Venice Horizons sidebar before traveling on to Toronto, is a case in point — both , but alive always to the co-existence of the banal with the spiritual.
Three generations of a Tibetan farming family, represented by a grandfather (Konchok), father Dargye (Jinpa) and Dargye’s two rambunctious young sons (Druklha Dorje and Palden Nyima), are out on a hillock...
Three generations of a Tibetan farming family, represented by a grandfather (Konchok), father Dargye (Jinpa) and Dargye’s two rambunctious young sons (Druklha Dorje and Palden Nyima), are out on a hillock...
- 9/4/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Straying quite far away in terms of aesthetics from the multi-awarded “Tharlo”, Pema Tseden directs a much more approachable film that lingers between the road movie and the western, before it concludes in complete deliriousness. Let us take things from the beginning, though.
The story takes place in Kekexili, a secluded area in Tibet which is considered the largest and highest plateau in the world. The protagonist, Jinpa, is a truck driver dressed like a rock star, who listens to classical music in his car as he carries his cargo across the barren roads of the area. Two occurrences, however, completely change his fate. The first one takes place when he hits a stray sheep on the road, killing it and eventually taking it with him, and the second when he picks up a young man who is hitching a ride, also named Jinpa. The young man reveals that he...
The story takes place in Kekexili, a secluded area in Tibet which is considered the largest and highest plateau in the world. The protagonist, Jinpa, is a truck driver dressed like a rock star, who listens to classical music in his car as he carries his cargo across the barren roads of the area. Two occurrences, however, completely change his fate. The first one takes place when he hits a stray sheep on the road, killing it and eventually taking it with him, and the second when he picks up a young man who is hitching a ride, also named Jinpa. The young man reveals that he...
- 2/13/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The 75th Venice International Film Festival has finally announced the line-up in a press conference in Rome, hosted by the President of the Biennale di Venezia Paolo Baratta and by the Director of the Cinema department Alberto Barbera.
The Venice International Film Festival has been welcoming in the past many Asian movies especially under the previous Director Marco Muller (2004-2011), a dedicated advocate and promoter of Asian Cinema, but this year the Asian presence is particularly poor. A bit surprising after the success in Cannes of Palme d’Or director Hirokazu Kore’eda with “Shoplifters” and Lee Chang-dong with “Burning”.
Only one film – Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto’s new movie “Zan” – is in the Official Competition and few more “usual suspects” are scattered in the other sections. Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang – a regular of the festival – is in the Out of Competition Section with his “Ni De Lian“, where other...
The Venice International Film Festival has been welcoming in the past many Asian movies especially under the previous Director Marco Muller (2004-2011), a dedicated advocate and promoter of Asian Cinema, but this year the Asian presence is particularly poor. A bit surprising after the success in Cannes of Palme d’Or director Hirokazu Kore’eda with “Shoplifters” and Lee Chang-dong with “Burning”.
Only one film – Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto’s new movie “Zan” – is in the Official Competition and few more “usual suspects” are scattered in the other sections. Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang – a regular of the festival – is in the Out of Competition Section with his “Ni De Lian“, where other...
- 7/31/2018
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
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