Resurrection · reception & legacy

How Resurrection has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It split Cannes 2025 down the middle — ecstatic raves against baffled shrugs — until Juliette Binoche's jury literally invented a Special Prize just to honour it; within a year it had gone from festival curio to the arthouse event of the season.

What's debated

The eternal Bi Gan debate, louder than ever: transcendent dream-cinema or gorgeous self-indulgence — does it all cohere, or is it just the most beautiful vibes ever projected?

Its footprint

Binoche calling it an 'unidentified flying object' became its unofficial tagline, and its century-of-cinema structure — six parts, each dreamed in a different era's film language — is the conceit cinephiles can't stop describing to each other.

Where it stands

An instant canon-climber and Letterboxd obsession, inheriting the see-it-on-the-biggest-screen-possible cult of Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Named by the director

Influences Bi Gan has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Stalker (1979) — Bi Gan again cited Tarkovsky's film as the inspiration that made him a filmmaker, the touchstone behind Resurrection's dream-logic.
• Buster Keaton — Named by Bi Gan as a silent-era love he channelled while making the film's silent-cinema section in the period's own mindset and techniques.
• Charlie Chaplin — Cited alongside Keaton as the silent-film artistry Bi Gan studied — he had Shu Qi watch silent-era performances to understand, not imitate, them.