Project Awards
Special Mention, New York Asian Film Festival
Sangui's Love Story
Creative Statement
Four years ago I went through a period of frequent insomnia, and nothing I tried worked. One night, lying awake and staring at the ceiling in despair, I suddenly thought of the person I envied most in the world at that moment: Sleeping Beauty. If a prince climbed in through the window to rescue me, I would want his kiss to have the opposite effect and put me to sleep at once. For a long time I had wanted to tell a romantic, absurd fairy tale, and the idea of this kiss gave me the inspiration. So I gave the boy in the story, Sangui, a curse: anything he kisses falls into a deep sleep at once, unless he kisses his true love. I still chose the most traditional fairy-tale devices: a curse and true love. We can all sense how outdated and awkward the phrase "true love" has become today; we usually use it to mean a naive kind of love we are embarrassed to believe in. The same goes for fairy tales: we joke that we are "too old to believe in fairy tales". But "true love" is a term we humans invented to hold our purest, most romantic longings and imaginings about love and romance. These fairy tales never seem to have been meant to force everyone to believe that true love exists, or to define what it is. As I understand it, their most important purpose has always been to keep our capacity to feel romance and childlike wonder. So for me, fairy tales about true love are always worth telling. We already have the old ones we know well, and I hope to go on telling a new one.
Synopsis
Above the clouds is a heavenly casino where the gods amuse themselves by betting on human joys and sorrows. One of their bets is about whether true love exists. The gods choose a newborn boy on earth and place a strange curse on him: anything he kisses falls into a deep sleep at once, unless he kisses his true love. The cursed boy is named Wang Sangui. Born under the curse, Sangui has a lonely and unhappy childhood. His only friend is a girl from White Stone City, but because of her his curse is discovered, and the townspeople treat him as an outcast. After the grandmother who raised him dies and the girl leaves without saying goodbye, young Sangui, with no one to depend on, leaves his hometown. He comes to the girl's town, White Stone City, where he grows up alone and meets three women who change his fate. White Stone City looks beautiful and peaceful, but in a place underground that never sees daylight, many strange, disabled and disfigured people are held captive. They are people abandoned by love, and they make fireworks for the city's annual fireworks festival. Sangui, too, is unfortunately drawn into this. Where will Sangui's fate lead? Will his curse finally be broken?
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Genre:
Drama, Romance, Fantasy -
Release Date:
2023-09-09 (Chinese Mainland)
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Selection Year and Section:
Top 30, Main Project Section, 2020 -
Director:
Liu Siyi
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Screenwriter:
Liu Siyi | Qiu Yujie -
Cast:
Hu Xianxu | Yao Chen | Zhou Ye | Zhou Yiran | Zheng Yunlong
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Producer:
Fu Jia | Li Jin -
Executive Producer:
Li Shaohong
Logline
Because of a bet between a god and a goddess, Wang Sangui, a boy on earth, is given a strange curse: anything he kisses falls into a deep sleep at once. To break the curse, Sangui sets out on a coming-of-age journey in search of true love.