ND/NF ’26: Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

What is it like to come out as non-binary in today’s China? Artist-filmmaker Viv Li is reluctant to find out. To a large degree, she has adopted the norms and values of the Grman hipster art-world, but she still wants to identify as Chinese. Through her very personal lens, the audience gets an unvarnished perspective on both worlds in Li’s Two Mountains Weighing Down on My Chest, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Weirdly, there just might be something to annoy everyone in Li’s film, which is absolutely a point in its favor. Through her German friends she engages in various forms of nudist “decadence” (as the Maoists back home might say). Indeed, a great deal of the pretentious art produced by her circle will truly underwhelm the average working-class stiff, from either China or the West.

Yet, when Li returns home, she is clearly put off by her relatives’ idolization of Mao and Xi. She tries to hold her tongue and avoid politics, but she has to scoff when they claim the majority of American homes lack basic necessities, like electrified power. Indeed, regardless, of your take on the art produced by Li’s friends, her film vividly documents the dubious nature of CCP propaganda and just how desperately older Chinese generations want to believe it.

Brand New Landscape (ND/NF), at Cinema Daily US

BRAND NEW LANDSCAPE is a quiet but potent family chamber drama that also has a good deal of architectural savvy. The minimalist aesthetic is not for everyone, but the performances are impressive. ND/NF review up at CINEMA DAILY US here.

ND/NF ’26: Next Life

In Tibet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constantly destroys lives, but it also jeopardizes reincarnations. For Tibetans exiles like Rigzin’s parents, a return to their homeland before their anticipated deaths holds great karmic implications for their next life. However, the occupying CCP rarely issues travel visas for Tibetan exiles. So far, Rigzin’s Pala and Amala have not been exceptions. He keeps applying, but time is running out in Tenzin Phuntsog’s Next Life, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Tsewang and his wife have been happy living in America, but they still feel like they belong in Tibet. In contrast, Rigzin clearly identifies with America on a cultural level, even though he speaks Tibetan with his parents and practices Tibetan Buddhism. Tsewang’s heart is failing, so he has given up on Western medicine, in favor of traditional Tibetan healing. However, the results remain the same.

Next Life very much explores the dynamics of modern immigrant families, but their dilemma is distinctly Tibetan. Given Tsewang’s extensive family roots in Tibet and his advanced age, the CCP’s continued rejection of his visa application is simply a product of cruelty and spite. Perhaps the most telling sequence captures Rigzin trying to navigate the Chinese consulate’s automated phone system, until he finally reaches a consular officer, who sounds like a dystopian AI chatbot, but was perfectly voiced by Yanbin Zhao.

ND/NF ’26: Panda

The Yangtze is truly a river of tears. Throughout history, its floods have been devastating, leading to the deaths of hundred as recently as 2016. According to scientists, the Yangtze also contributes more plastic pollution to the oceans than any other river. Plus, in Nanjing, the bridge over the Yangtze happens to be a notorious site for suicides. Old Xin Qiji can’t do much about pollution or floods but he does his best to prevent suicides in Xinyang Zhang’s Panda, which screens during the 2026 New Directors/New Films.

Xin is a lot like the real-life Chen Si, whose efforts to dissuade potentials suicides on the Yangtze River Bridge were documented in The Angel of Nanjing. However, Xin is literally more poetic, incorporating his verse into the holistic treatment he proscribes for ailing suicide survivors.  Or, perhaps they are ghosts. Regardless, Xin is still there to treat their spiritual and emotional sicknesses.

Apparently, Frog Zhu has taken refuge in delusion, believing himself a mystical dragon rider, who must find a legendary beast to travel back to heaven. At least he no longer shows suicidal tendencies. Slowly, he starts to interact with Zhang’s small distantly interconnected cast of characters, including Pansy, a young woman struggling with her dysfunctional family. Arguably, Panda plays out like Short Cuts on the Yangtze, but with fewer overlapping plot arcs and considerably more emotional distance.

Zhang’s gritty, neo-realist style and affinity for those living on the extreme margins of contemporary Chinese society reflects the influence of his mentor, Jia Zhangke. However, he occasionally veers into surrealist magical realism that shares a kinship with the films of Bi Gan. Frankly, it is a shame he did not lean into the latter more forcefully, because the fantastical detours represent the film’s most powerful sequences. Frankly, Panda would be much more commercial if Zhang had made the scene depicting Old Xin conversing with the spirit of a deceased friend, who now inhabits a panda in the zoo, into a regular motif.

ND/NF ’26: Leviticus

Even before the 1980s, horror movies were associating sex and death. The former often led to the latter, but for the horny teens consuming these movies, the hedonism was maybe worth the risk. “Au contraire” say the Evangelical Australians, who will do anything to keep their kids from swinging the wrong way. For Naim and his on-again-off-again friend-hook-up-lover Ryan, the cure is way worse than the disease in director-screenwriter Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus, the opening night film of this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Naim and his mother recently moved to the sleepy provincial town after enduring a vague, never fully explained trauma. Clearly, she has adopted religion as her coping mechanism—the more old-time, the better. Despite their church’s funky-aspiring Christian rock band, Naim is more interested in exploring his sexuality, preferably with Ryan. Unfortunately, Ryan also does some exploring with the “blue jeans” pastor’s son.

In a fit of jealousy, Naim informs on Ryan and his rival, but soon regrets it. To cure the boys, the congregation brings in a “Deliverance Preacher” who essentially places a curse on the lads. Every night, a demon will taunt them in the form of the one they most desire. According to the film’s logic, this is intended to scare them straight, literally. Yet, if it actually worked, wouldn’t the demon subsequently take the shape of women?

Regardless, Naim’s mother soon commits the ultimate betrayal, by arranging his own session with the Deliverance Preacher. Ironically, she drives Naim back to Ryan. Despite the risks, they join forces, in hopes of devising a way to undo the curse. As long as they are with someone, the demon cannot approach. Yet, as soon as they separate, they cannot tell whether the doppelganger might be appearing before them, instead their forbidden lover.

Clearly, Leviticus (named for the Old Testament book with the hardcore fire-and brimstone reputation) owes an enormous debt of gratitude to David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. Chiarella and cinematographer Tyson Perkins stage several darkly sinister scenes, in which tremendous tension is built from the is-he-or-isn’t-he question. Frankly, the paranoia of not being able to trust the one you adore the most is quite terrifying.

However, the entire curse business makes little sense and the depiction of the Evangelicals is distractingly heavy-handed and simplistic. If Chiarella were to make a film about Berber nomads, he would probably try to understand their culture, their values, and their world view. Yet, obviously, no such effort was made with Evangelicals. The truth is they simply do not talk or think as Chiarella depicts. The absence of such understanding leaves Leviticus conspicuously populated with straw men, whose only purpose is to undermine the beliefs they supposedly profess. That’s projection and wish fulfilment.