Once Upon A Time In 華語 Cinema 2027

From Page to Screen. Across the Sinophone World.

Stories travel across borders, languages and generations. In 2027, Once Upon a Time in 華語 Cinema explores films adapted from the work of Chinese writers around the world, whose literary worlds extend beyond any single country or language. Rooted in different places and shaped by migration, memory and cultural exchange, their stories offer many ways of imagining a life.

Across ten films, this season considers what happens when those worlds are reimagined for the screen. A writer’s inner voice becomes a face, a gesture or a silence. Memories acquire colour and rhythm; desire takes bodily form. Filmmakers do more than illustrate the page: they bring their own experiences and artistic choices to the stories they inherit.

From intimate relationships to lives caught in historical change, these adaptations reveal connections and differences across a widely dispersed literary landscape. Together, they invite us to encounter Chinese writing as a living, diverse conversation, and cinema as a place where that conversation finds new voices.

Presented monthly at ACMI from February to November 2027.