Caught by the Tides

A document of the historical and thematic undercurrents in the last 20 years of Jia Zhangke’s cinema, Caught by the Tides, the latest from the Sixth Generation Chinese director, plays like a medley or greatest hits album of scenes and ideas from his previous work. Jia has spent his entire career chronicling the sociopolitical and infrastructural changes resulting from China’s race to globalize, expand its economy, and urbanize its landscape, and how those dramatic updates have impacted his characters. He has approached this preoccupation by blending fiction and documentary within a single film (see Xiao Wu, 1997). However, sometimes he dabbles in pure nonfiction (I Wish I Knew, 2010) and occasionally pure drama (Mountains May Depart, 2015). Caught by the Tides is among Jia’s most experimental and unconventional films. In terms of structure, the film transcends the standards established during the last three decades of Jia’s output, even while ruminating on the same basic themes.

This film was screened at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. Janus Films and Sideshow will release Caught by the Tides in theaters on May 9, 2025. The full review is currently posted on Patreon and will be made available closer to the film’s release. To read it, you can purchase access individually. You can also join Deep Focus Review’s Patron community, where you’ll first receive exclusive access to this essay and many other reviews and blogs published on Patreon.

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