Stonewalling

Stonewalling (2024)

石门

20 year-old Lynn is told she needs English classes, flight attendant school, and a go getter-attitude. She perseveres along this path of upward mobility until she finds out she's pregnant. Indecisive and running out of time, she tells her boyfriend she's had an abortion and instead returns to her feuding parents and their failing clinic to try and figure out what's next.

Data di uscita
2024-02-22
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (7)
Durata
2 h 28 min
Generi
Dramma
Regista
Huang Ji, Ryuji Otsuka

Cast

Curiosità

  • Premi: 2 · Candidature: 0. Tra cui: Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film; Golden Horse Award for Best Film Editing

Stonewalling is a 2022 Japanese independent drama film written and directed by Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka. Although shot in China, the film is classified as a Japanese production. It is the third and final film in a trilogy that includes Egg and Stone (2012) and The Foolish Bird (2017), films which depict young womanhood in contemporary China. The film stars Yao Honggui, who also appeared in the first two films, as a young Chinese woman struggling with an unexpected pregnancy.

Production

Husband-and-wife duo Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji are filmmakers based in Japan. Stonewalling is the third and final film in a trilogy that includes Egg and Stone (2012) and The Foolish Bird (2017), films which depict the hardships and sexuality of young women in contemporary China. Stonewalling focuses on the passage of time and changes in the body and mind of a young woman as depicted through pregnancy.

The film stars Yao Honggui, who also appeared in the first two films, and was tailored to reflect Honggui's own bodily experiences during production. At the time of production, Honggui had moved from her home in rural Hunan to study at a university in the provincial capital, Changsha. Huang and Otsuka interviewed several young women in Changsha who similarly had moved from rural Hunan to study at a university in Changsha.

Huang has explained that their motivation with Stonewalling was to bring attention to "the plight of young women who have not been blessed with a good education" and "their struggles in finding their place in a rapidly changing society."

The film's title in Chinese translates to "stone gate". The English title was suggested to the directors by one of their student interviewees. Otsuka explained that the original title "feels too hard and cold. The verb in present continuous – "walling" – made the title softer. It corresponds with Lynn's state of mind and heart as she goes through changes."

Stonewalling was primarily shot in a small town in Hunan, in the clinic of Huang Ji's parents, who appear in the film as Lynn's parents. The pair also shot scenes in Changsha to reflect Lynn's "adult circumstances and need for work". The film was shot a small budget, with a crew consisting of three people.

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