Bloody morning [NTSC]

Directed by gifted Fifth Generation director Li Shaohong (who went on to make “Blush”), and loosely based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”, “Bloody Morning” was banned from export for a number of years. The film, which points to the consequences of poverty and backwardness in rural China, opens with the discovery of a brutal murder in a northern Chinese village. Two brothers readily confess to murdering the local schoolteacher as an act of revenge for the “defilement” of their sister. The story is explored in a complex web of flashbacks triggered by interviews conducted by the magistrate investigating the case. Gradually, a backdrop of complex pre-existing social dynamics emerge - tribal relationships, the puritanical stance of traditional village society, anti-intellectualism, and blood revenge - that provide fertile ground for the ensuing tragedy. In Mandarin with English subtitles.