SFS Talkies @ The Arts House: When Night Falls
2012 | 70min |South Korea & China | In Chinese with English subtitles | M18

When Night Falls is a work of fiction based on the gruesome and tragic real-life story of Yang Jia, a young man from the outskirts of Shanghai who was fined for riding an unregistered bicycle, reportedly beaten while in police custody, and subsequently harassed as he sought to bring charges against the officers. After unsuccessfully petitioning for justice, Yang Jia snapped, walked into a local police station and murdered six officers. Yang Jia was executed shortly thereafter for the crime. Widely interpreted as an extreme act of political resistance, the case enraged Chinese human rights activists (including Ai Weiwei, who has made his own documentary about the tragedy).

But the focus of When Night Falls is not Yang Jia, but rather his mother, Wang Jingmei (a wrenching performance by Nai An, a non-professional actor and producer for filmmaker Lou Ye), who was illegally detained in a mental hospital under a false name following her son’s arrest, and prevented from giving evidence to mount Yang Jia’s defense. Struggling to comprehend how her gentle, generous and law-abiding son could ever have committed such a heinous act, Wang Jingmei is forced to deal with issues both banal and surreal, personifying the collateral human damage caused by a regime that ignores its own laws and processes when convenient.

Shot in long, static takes and constricting compositions with mostly non-professional actors — which partake of documentary-style realism while reinforcing the suffocating atmosphere of injustice, sorrow and paranoia — When Night Falls is a work of profound and vital humanism. Bravely and eloquently giving voice to those who have been forcibly silenced — the film’s original Chinese title can be translated as "I Still Have Something To Say" — Ying Liang has made an impassioned rallying cry for transparency and fairness.

*Winner of Best Director and Best Actress at 2012 Lorcano Film Festival

* Selection for Toronto Film Festival and Golden Horse Film Festival

About the Director:

YING LIANG is a Chinese independent filmmaker, festival curator and lecturer in film. He graduated from the Department of Directing at the Chongqing Film Academy and Beijing Normal University, and  made his directorial debut in 1999. He has since made more than a dozen short films and four features, including Taking Father Home (2005), The Other Half (2006) and When Night Falls (2012) with many of his work being screened at numerous international film festivals.

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