The Close-up

We’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with director Bi Gan as he discusses the NYFF63 Main Slate selection Resurrection. Resurrection opens at Film at Lincoln Center on Thursday, December 11. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/resurrection This phantasmagoric dream machine from visionary Chinese director Bi Gan is an elusive yet monumental love letter to a century of cinema. Unfolding over five chapters that feature a dazzling array of styles, Resurrection is a cascade of imagery united by a luminous mythopoetic conceit: in a sci-fi-coded world where people have lost the desire to dream in the hopes of prolonging life, rogue “fantasmers” continue to stoke their imaginations and exist within unreality. From this magical premise, the film sends its ever-morphing protagonist through a series of genres, from Méliès-inflected silent fantasy to wartime thriller to con-artist buddy picture to millennial vampire romance—the latter depicted in one of Bi’s customary, and ever astonishi