Caught by the Tides

Caught by the Tides follows Qiao Qiao, a young woman from northern China who sets out to find her partner Guao Bin, after he leaves their hometown to "make money" and gradually disappears from her life. Using footage shot over more than twenty years-older material from past projects combined with newly filmed scenes-Jia Zhangke turns this simple emotional premise into a portrait of China's profound social transformation. Qiao Qiao's journey takes her through declining industrial towns, regions reshaped by massive infrastructure projects, and finally a post-Covid China marked by rapid technological and urban change. As she moves through these shifting landscapes, she herself grows older and more solitary, while the man she ultimately finds is no longer the one she once loved. Rather than a traditional narrative, the film unfolds as a visual collage, a tapestry of memories, everyday moments, and documentary fragments. It becomes a meditation on time, migration, modernization, loss, and the way ordinary lives are swept along-caught by the tides-of historical change.