Sightlines · reception
How Resurrection was received
2025 · Bi Gan · Resurrection on Sightlines
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 honor 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.
Did you know? The score is by M83's Anthony Gonzalez — the 'Midnight City' band scoring a Chinese art film — and Janus Films snapped up North American rights within days of its Cannes prize.
Named by the director
- 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 channeled 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.