Kong Xiu / A Woman , latest feature film from the Chinese moviemaker Wang Chao, will complete the list of films competing in the Official Selection at the San Sebastian Festival, whose 70th edition will run from September 16-24.
Based on the autobiographical novel Dream by the writer Zhang Xiu Zhen, the film tells a tale set at the height of the Cultural Revolution whose lead character is a woman who writes in her spare time from the heavy worskshop toil.
Wang Chao (Nanjing, 1964) has directed ten feature films, particularly including Anyangde guer / The Orphan of Anyang (2001), selected for the Cannes Quinzaine des Réalisateurs; Jiang cheng xia ri / Luxury Car (2006), winner of the Best Film Award in Un Certain Regard at the Festival de Cannes, and Huan xiang qu / Fantasia (2014), selected for the same section of the French competition.
Wang Chao therefore joins the other 16 contenders for the Golden Shell previously announced: Manuel Abramovich, Fernando Franco, Mikel Gurrea, Christophe Honoré, Genki Kawamura, Sebastián Lelio, Diego Lerman, Marco Martins, Marian Mathias, Laura Mora, Pilar Palomero, Frelle Petersen, Jaime Rosales, Hong Sangsoo, Ulrich Seidl and Petr Václav.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Kong Xiu, an ordinary female worker, bravely got rid of the shackles of two unfortunate marriages, and grew up to be a writer in her spare time in the heavy workshop work.