| Getting Home | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Zhang Yang |
| Produced by | Stanley Tong Er Yong Zhang Yang |
| Written by | Zhang Yang Wang Yao |
| Starring | Zhao Benshan Song Dandan Guo Degang Hu Jun Xia Yu Wu Ma |
| Music by | Dou Peng |
| Cinematography | Yu Lik-wai Lai Yiu-fai |
| Editing by | Yang Hongyu |
| Distributed by | Worldwide: Fortissimo Films |
| Release date(s) | Hong Kong: January 25, 2007 Berlin: February 11, 2007 |
| Running time | 90 min. |
| Country | PR China Hong Kong |
| Language | Mandarin Chinese |
Getting Home (simplified Chinese: 落叶归根; traditional Chinese: 落葉歸根; pinyin: Lùo yè gūi gēn) is a 2007 Chinese comedy/drama film directed by Zhang Yang and starring Chinese comedian Zhao Benshan. The film is episodic in nature and follows two workers in their 50's, Zhao (Zhao Benshan) and Liu (Hong Qiwen). The film opens when Liu unexpectedly dies after a night of drinking and Zhao decides to fulfill a promise to his friend to get him home beginning a long odyssey from Shenzhen to Chongqing with Liu's corpse on his back. Along the way, Zhao meets a variety of figures, played by several of China's better known character actors.
Getting Home is Zhang Yang's fifth feature film. It was produced by Filmko Entertainment of Hong Kong and the Beijing Jinqianshengshi Culture Media company of the People's Republic of China. International sales and distribution was by Fortissimo Films out of Amsterdam.
Getting Home's original title derives from a Chinese proverb meaning "A falling leaf returns to its roots."[1] It is apparently based on a true story.[2]
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Originally entitled Air,[3] Getting Home was financed by Filmko Films and Fortissimo Films and produced by Peter Loehr (of Ming Productions and the Imar Film Company) and Wouter Barendrecht of Fortissimo.[3] This marked the first collaboration between Zhang and Filmko, but the fifth with Fortissimo.[3]
Though the film documents Zhao's journey from Shenzhen to Chongqing, the majority of shooting took place in Yunnan, a Chinese province in the southwest.[1]
Getting Home had its Western debut in the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival on February 11, 2007, as part of the festival's Panorama series. There it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.[4] Since Berlin, Getting Home has made the rounds in the festival circuit, including Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival, Deauville[5] and the New York Asian Film Festival.[6]
Western critics, meanwhile, have embraced the film, with several noting that while the synopsis recalls the American comedy Weekend at Bernie's, Getting Home far surpasses that film in plot, cast, and drama. One critic notes that the film is "a perfectly pitched and quite heartwarming drama about friendship and promises, with a welcome drop of dark humour."[7] Several magazines, meanwhile, including Variety and that's Beijing praised the performance of Zhao Benshan in particular as "finely calibrated" and "vivid" respectively.[1][2]
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