Director: Andrea Serge
Talent: Tao Zhao, Rade Serbedzija, Marco Paolini
Release Date: 21st June 2013
In his first narrative film, documentary-maker Andrea Serge builds on a previous theme of investigating cross-cultural interaction. Shun Li and the Poet follows the titular Chinese immigrant (Tao Zhao) as she attempts to pay back the debt that brought her to Italy and will eventually reunite her with her young son. Working in a bar in the small fishing town of Chioggia she meets Bepi, the poet, portrayed in a nuanced performance by Rade Serbedzija, which simply shatters the shackles of his usual Hollywood type-casting. As a piece of social realism, the film concerns itself with the friendship of the two individuals as well as the small misunderstandings, misguided opinions and general benightedness that constitute cultural intolerance and leave different communities taking up the same geographical space but existing in different worlds. Serge’s camera pays homage to the town where he used to holiday while also using it as a stunning, placid backdrop over which the plot’s inherent tensions quietly ripple. A thing of beauty both inside and out.
