23 may 2025

Cannes 2025: Why Resurrection by Chinese prodigy Bi Gan has captivated us

In competition for the Palme d’Or, Resurrection, the third film by Chinese director Bi Gan, brings together Shu Qi and Jackson Yee in an ambitious tribute to cinema.

  • By Olivier Joyard.

  • Resurrection: a tribute to cinema

    While Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague brought Jean-Luc Godard back to life by portraying the filming of Breathless, Cannes welcomes another competition entry where cinema itself becomes the beating heart and main topic. Except that, with Resurrection, we might be witnessing its eulogy – a necessity for us to believe in its rebirth.

    A far cry from the virtuoso comedy of the American director, Chinese gifted director Bi Gan, who already made Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey into Night, now delivers a deeply personal and beautiful reverie. Expect 2 hours and 35 minutes saturated with images at the crossroads between dreams, memories, parables, realism, fairytale, sci-fi, melodrama, and dark thriller.

    Jackson Yee stars alongside Shu Qi

    Resurrection unfolds throughout multiple chapters. The strange fate of the protagonist – Chinese superstar and TFBoys member Jackson Yee – begins. He is the last man capable of dreaming in a world that has forgotten how. He becomes the “cinema-man,” a monstrous figure. Well-known for her roles with Hou Hsiao-hsien, Shu Qi portrays a woman who enters his cinematic dreams and guides us through them.

    We embark on a journey through the 20th century, tracing both the history of China and of the seventh art. As the film progresses, we begin to decipher the enigma of its construction and the effects it has on us. We drift through an ocean of surprises and symbols as Bi Gan stimulates our senses. Indeed, the film devotes separate parts to hearing, taste, smell, and finally, touch.

    Bi Gan’s ambitious third feature film

    The film both strikes us and slips away from us. It is at times transparent, or completely impenetrable. Yet, that doesn’t mean it goes on the wrong track. The masterpiece we might have hoped for is not always present, but is it really a bad thing when the attempt is so vibrant, obsessive and spacey?

    Bi Gan, 35, demonstrates formidable ambition. He works the films before him and cinema like clay, seeking to extract a unique creation, a light torn from the darkness of a world, which perhaps has lost faith in cinema. And where else better than the Cannes Film Festival to proclaim it?

    How can we reflect on the film?

    Cited and copied for its pith and marrow, the film evokes The Sprinkler Sprinkled by the Lumière brothers, Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans among others. Yet, it also imagines the future of cinema, free from linear narratives and using special effects to poeticize the world.

    Thus, Resurrection is some kind of grand, impossible remake. Perhaps the last film in the history of cinema, but also the very first one thanks to its primitive, futuristic gesture. To not see it appear in the list of Juliette Binoche’s Jury Prize will be disappointing. Whatever happens, Bi Gan’s film exists and has captivated us.

    Resurrection directed by Bi Gan. In competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.