Lao Zai
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Best Music
Music, Seeking Passage
Jury Citation
The music of Seeking Passage is closely integrated with the theme, the visual language and the plot. The complex, multi-dimensional structure of its musical storytelling is central to establishing the film's overall aesthetic style. The music blends with the inner tension of the script, and its poetic musical vocabulary conveys the weight of history while highlighting the distinct artistic sensibility of its creator.
Seeking Passage: Synopsis
In the early 20th century, in an old town south of the Yangtze, three teenagers from declining families become good friends. A Shuang's mother takes her own life and his family scatters; alone, he goes to Beiping to study at the tuition-free Russian Language Institute. Zhang Fu studies at Peking University for a year, then transfers to the cheaper Peiyang University, planning to become a lawyer after graduating. Yuyu loves reading and writing; he attends the inexpensive Wuchang Zhonghua University and founds a utopian mutual-aid society... They are Qu Qiubai, Zhang Tailei and Yun Daiying, who would later become early leaders of the Communist Party of China. Qu Qiubai was the highest-ranking Party leader to be executed by the enemy; Zhang Tailei was the highest-ranking leader to die on the front line; and the magazine Chinese Youth, which Yun Daiying founded and edited, turns 100 this year. The film tells the story of the three young men's lifelong "search for a crossing"...