Red Amnesia

Red Amnesia is an edgy and disturbing thriller set in the multi-faceted, ever-changing world of contemporary China. This latest film from world-renowned director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, In Love We Trust) brings powerful political urgency to the telling of its extremely suspenseful tale.

Deng is a woman of stubborn integrity. Her two grown-up sons neither appreciate nor welcome her loving efforts to keep the family well fed, and she makes daily visits to her mother's retirement home even though the senile lady doesn't acknowledge her presence. The ghost of Deng's recently deceased husband is her only company — until one day a more menacing presence starts haunting her daily routine. Who is stalking her with anonymous phone calls? Is she imagining it all, or is someone really after her, and why?

Racing with indescribable velocity towards its future of presumed prosperity, China seems to have consigned its recent past to oblivion. Wang's film renders this collective amnesia as a zone where the borders between memories and reality are blurred, and those people who truly remember recent history are adrift in the limbo created by the nation's eagerness to forget. Finely tuned by Wang's brilliant artistry, Red Amnesia is both a ballad of generational displacement and a chilling experience that will linger long in viewers' memories.

GIOVANNA FULVI