It is easiest if I simply make the claim from the outset: Bi Gan is the most interesting filmmaker working in the Chinese-speaking world today. You can come at me with your Wong Kar-wais, your Johnnie Tos, or even your Tsai Ming-liangs if you’re feeling particular artful, but dollar-for-dollar right now my enthusiasm peaks for Bi. He has only directed three features to date: Kaili Blues (2015), Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), and now Resurrection (2025). Each of them has felt astonishing to watch, superbly inventive, and quite simply unlike anything else being made right now.

Is Resurrection quite as good as his earlier films? Possibly not, but to be clear we are at a level of comparing a four-star film to a five-star one: it is still one of the most accomplished screen works I have seen this year. It is, essentially, an episodic film with perhaps one too many episodes. Is it arguably pretentious? Yes, but I adore decent pretence. Is it weird and partially nonsensical? Perhaps, but I honestly adore a good-looking film that impacts me emotionally without too much logic getting in the way.

Resurrection is a dream narrative with a razor-thin science fiction premise, and a love letter to the history of Chinese cinema. It is an experience that I am glad to have undertaken, and would happily take again. This is cinema that takes its audience places.

In an unspecified future, humanity has gained immortality but lost the ability to dream. A woman discovers a monster that can enable her to live through its dream reality – and in doing so, takes her through its visions of Chinese history.

The story is a little weak. It is also an excuse for Bi’s aesthetic flights of fancy, broken up into six chapters. The first represents an obvious ode to German expressionism, with Shu Qi playing the woman who wakes the so-called “Fantasmer” and sends it on its dream journey. Subsequent chapters rely on a variety of sources and inspirations – part of the fun of the film is recognising what they are.

The end result is rather like floating from one in media res narrative to another, with regular changes in style, setting, and cast. Mark Chao plays a World War II-era investigator, Zhang Zhijian a melancholic gangster looking for miracles, and Li Gengxi a turn-of-the-millennium party goer with an unexpected secret. The performances are remarkably effective given the film’s overall languid nature. It all looks sensational, thanks to its production design and photography. It sounds wonderfully evocative thanks to French outfit M83’s deeply cine-literate musical score.

Bi’s first two films gained the most attention for their remarkable extended long takes, and it is not a surprise to seem him return to the format for a third time. In an astonishing 40-minute sequence he somehow moves from harbour to street to millennial party and back, shifting perspective from third to first-person and back, incorporating song, dance, and violence, shifting frame rate back and forth, and somehow managing to end on a perfect angle of a sunrise from the deck of a moving boat. It is filmmaking as a magic trick (and allegedly took almost 30 six-hour takes – one a night for a month – to perfect).

It is all heartfelt, gentle nonsense. The more any given viewer tries to make sense of it all, the more it seems likely to frustrate. I imagine a lot of viewers will mistake it for self-indulgence. Instead it is a work into which one needs to relax. It is film-as-dream to tell a story of dreams-as-film. Go willingly.

Resurrection has been screening at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival. Click here for more information.