The Shadowless Tower

Berlinale 2023
Competition

The Shadowless Tower

A Film by Zhang Lu

2023 - China - Drama - 1.85:1 - 144 min.

with Xin Baiqing , Huang Yao & Tian Zhuangzhuang

Language: Mandarin
Produced by Jiahan Xu

Gu Wentong, a middle-aged food critic, is drifting through the local eateries of vibrant Beijing with his younger photographer colleague Oyang. A divorcé with a 6-year-old daughter and estranged from his father for decades, he is looking for a new perspective on life while reconsidering his failings as a father, a son, and a lover. While the seasons come and go, people get together and move apart. Only one thing will remain the same: The White Pagoda where they all meet sooner or later...

Berlinale 2023
Competition

More Films

Are We Lost Forever

A film by David Färdmar

2020 - Sweden - Drama/LGBTQ - 104 min.

One morning it is over. For Hampus it is a relief to break up from their destructive relationship, while Adrian is devastated and heartbroken. Will he be able to survive without the love of his life, or is there a possible way of somehow getting him back?

Two Step

A film by Alex R. Johnson

2014 - USA - Thriller - DCP - 1.78 - 93 min.

Austin, Texas. After the death of his grandmother, college student Jame finds consolation in the company of Dot, a Country Music dancer. While settling Grams' affairs, James discovers she has been the victim of the "grandparent scam" in which someone posing as James has been stealing her thousands of dollars. But before James can go looking for the culprit, he shows up at the front door, desperate for money.

Peter Hujar’s Day

A film by Ira Sachs

2025 - USA/Germany - Drama - 76 min.

Based on a richly cinematic rendering of a conversation recorded in 1974 between photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz the film re-imagines their talk that day in a single 24-hour period in the life of Hujar, the brilliant and famously uncompromising artist who was one of the most important figures in downtown New York's legendary cultural scene of the 1970s and 1980s.

Set entirely in Linda's Manhattan apartment, the film freely and imaginatively recreates that long-ago afternoon and the wonderfully discursive exchange between these two singular individuals. As the photographer vividly describes his interactions with leading cultural figures of the time, including Allen Ginsberg and Susan Sontag, as well as the challenges of living on limited financial resources in 1970s New York, Peter Hujar's Day transforms unexpectedly into a Bloomsday-like meditation on both an artist's life and time itself.