Inspired by the eponymous landscape painting by the Yuan Dynasty master Huang Gongwang, Gu Xiaogang’s debut film — which was given the prestigious closing slot during Critics Week at last year’s Cannes Film Festival — is as ambitious as it is beautiful. Struck by the immense changes that development brought to both the natural environment and the people of his hometown of Fuyang (recently renamed Hangzhou City), Gu shot the film over the course of two years in order to capture the changing of the seasons in the same area that Huang depicts in his painting. Using gorgeously composed shots echoing the perspective and compositions of traditional Chinese art, it tells the story of an extended family adapting to and struggling with the rapid changes affecting their lives. Clarence Tsui raves in The Hollywood Reporter, it is “as mesmerizing and immersive as the legendary 14th century landscape painting that inspired it….[I]t’s a vast canvas that stands up to close scrutiny both as a series of snapshots of its characters’ personalities and as the panorama of a society undergoing radical change.”