Six years prior to making A Family Tour, director Ying Liang was forced into exile after his film When Night Falls, a scathing critique on the abuse by Chinese police and government officials, clashed with censors. Mirroring Ying's own situation, A Family Tour tells the story of Yang Shu (the marvelous Gong Zhe), a filmmaker who fled to Hong Kong with her family after angering authorities with her art. Worried about her aging mother who remains in mainland China, the family coordinates a reunion in Taiwan: her mother on an organized tour and Yang Shu and her family following the tour bus, catching brief clandestine visits together at every tourist stop. As Yang Shu struggles to reconcile her desire to work freely as a filmmaker and her longing for home, director Ying Liang slowly and emotionally peels back the layers of the heartbreak of displacement.
Director Biography
Ying Liang is a Chinese screenwriter and filmmaker. In 2012, Ying released When Night Falls, which earned him the award for Best Director at the Locarno Film Festival, the ire of the Chinese government and eventual exile to Hong Kong.
Press
"[T]his intelligently affecting story of exile and displacement is Ying Liang’s most highly polished film to date" - Variety
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