In the City of Sylvia

A film by José Luis Guerín

A deceptively simple tale of a man's return to a city, in search of the woman that he loved six years earlier. The young man, an artist whose name we do not know, has come alone and on a whim to Strasbourg in order to find a beautiful woman called Sylvia whom he remembers from six years ago. It is not clear whether a relationship between them ever existed or if their meeting was just a chance encounter. He has no way of contacting her and nothing but a map she drew for him on a napkin, but he knows she was then a student at the Conservatoire. It is here that he is now seated in an outdoor café as he begins his task of waiting, watching and hoping. As he sips his beer he makes pencil sketches in his notebook of the young women who surround him, whilst patiently waiting for his lost love to appear. A glance, a gesture, a smile – precious moments captured which might somehow lead him to Sylvia or perhaps draw her to him. Sylvia's presence lingers, but is it possible to return to the past?

Suddenly a delicate and lovely young woman who may be Sylvia catches his eye, and after some deliberation, he abruptly leaves his table at the café to chase after the girl. Obsessively following her almost like a stalker, he calls out to her, "Sylvie?". Losing her momentarily in a labyrinth of alleys and streets, he then gets very close but we cannot be certain at this point whether she is aware of his presence. The girl boards a tram and he follows her. Again he asks her name, "Sylvie?" and then she speaks to him.

An outstanding, superbly shot and hauntingly enigmatic interior drama, perfectly capturing the sense of longing, unfulfilled desire and simple voyeuristic pleasure. The almost total absence of dialogue and the skilful use of shifting perspective allows us to follow the thoughts and musings of this young man and to join him as an observer of people amidst life in a French city. In being a part of the flânerie sustained by the gentlest thread of a story we become immersed and entranced by its moods, impressions, sensations and their repetitions. We find that we are observing a piece of art in motion, one in which we are free to provide the characterisation ourselves, by inference or reconstruction – exploring the power of the imagination over reality, bringing the magic of the dream into the everyday world.

Still Life

A film by Jia Zhangke

Set against the spectacular landscape of the Three Gorges region, this humane and moving film tells two contemplative and compassionate stories of a man and a woman searching for lost partners in Fengjie, an ancient town on the Yangtze River which is being demolished and will soon vanish for ever in the flooding caused by the controversial Three Gorges hydroelectric dam project.

In the separate yet marginally connected stories, the events in the lives of these two very different people mirror each other but with a contrasting emphasis and outcome. At the same time as offering a revelatory, thought-provoking portrait of people adrift in a world they no longer recognise, Sanxia Haoren also reveals their energy, resilience and ability to reach new understandings.

Sanming Han is a coal-miner from Fengyang in Shanxi province who is looking for his ex-wife, Missy Ma, who left him taking with her their daughter whom he has not seen for 16 years. Sanming has only an address given to him many years ago, and until his arrival in the town, had been completely unaware of the demolition and flooding taking place in the area. With the help of her brother he eventually traces Missy who works on a boat which is down-river in Yichang. Their daughter, who is the reason for Sanming's journey, is now working in Dongguan, much farther south, but in their meeting both Sanming and Missy discover they have renewed feelings for each other.

Shen Hong, a nurse from Taiyuan in Shanxi, has come to look for Guo Bin, her estranged property entrepreneur husband whom she has not heard from in two years. She enlists the help of one of his old friends, archaeologist Wang Dongming, in order to find him. Discovering he is now very successful in the business of asset stripping former state-owned properties, she suspects he is also having an affair with Ding-Ya Ling, his female associate. But when they finally meet she walks away, and when he follows her she reveals that she is in love with someone else and wants a divorce.

The natural beauty of the Three Gorges and the Yangtze River is contrasted with the manual demolition of the buildings in a town that will soon be lost for ever, and the human stories set against this background are fleeting, fragile and ethereal. The slow, balanced and contemplative motion of events suggests the movement of water, bringing fluidity, transformation and renewal. The film's focus is on the destruction of time and place and our collective loneliness in the modern world, and yet it is also a testament to the depth and capacity of the human spirit to overcome and adapt to loss and change in our lives.