His first narrative feature in six years, featuring footage collected over some two decades, Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides is one of the filmmaker’s greatest achievements. A summative piece in a career-spanning project of capturing China’s transformation, the Cannes, TIFF, and NYFF selection will now arrive in U.S. theaters beginning May 9 from Janus Films and Sideshow. Ahead of the release, the new trailer and poster have arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Traversing all of his past films, Jia Zhangke delivers an epic look at the romantic destiny of his perennial heroine, Qiaoqiao. Spanning 21 years of a country going through profound transformation, the film gives a new perspective to look into the contemporary China as well as the individual experiences under the turbulent emotional and social changes.”

Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Jia Zhangke’s is often a cinema of déjà vu: “We’re again in the northern Chinese city of Datong,” Giovanni Marchini Camia wrote for Sight and Sound back in 2019, “it’s again the start of the new millennium, Qiao is again dating a mobster, yet no one else makes a reappearance and there are enough differences to signal that this isn’t a sequel or remake.” Camia was writing about Ash Is Purest White yet much of the same could be said for Caught by the Tides, the director’s latest experiment in plundering his archive––indeed his memories––and spinning what he finds into something new. The protagonist of Tides is again named Qiao and is again played by Zhao Tao, appearing here in more than 20 years of the director’s footage and allowing the viewer to watch that singular creative partnership evolve in real time––one of the great treasures of contemporary cinema.”

See the trailer below and read our interview with the director on the making of the film here.