Zhai Jinyan
Award-Winning Filmmaker
Best Music
Music, The Lychee Road
Jury Citation
The Lychee Road receives Best Music in recognition of a score that brings tradition and modernity together with a cross-disciplinary approach, opening new possibilities in sound for historical storytelling. The music creates a dialogue between court ceremonial music and the bustle of the marketplace, keeping a classical spirit while using an inventive musical language. It brings the historical subject into resonance with the modern spirit and gives the film strong contemporary relevance.
The Lychee Road: Synopsis
The film is adapted from Ma Boyong's novel of the same name. In the Tianbao era of the Tang dynasty, the middle-aged Li Shande (Da Peng) has grumbled his way through a great deal of work and scrimped to spend a fair amount of money, yet he is still a nameless minor clerk. Then a summons seems to change everything: one day he is assigned the lucrative post of "Lychee Envoy". If he succeeds, wealth and status will turn his life around; but if he fails...