Long Day's Journey Into Night (I)

Bi Gan follows up his knockout debut, Kaili Blues, with this noir-tinged stunner about a lost soul (Huang Jue) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Tang Wei, Lust, Caution). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of colorful characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches into an hour-long, gravity-defying 3D sequence shot that plunges its protagonist—and us—into a labyrinthine cityscape.