24 City

2008

1 hr. 52 min.

Documentary

Drama

List

89%

44 Reviews

Tomatometer

72%

1,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Documentary focusing on the lives of eight people affected after a thriving factory in China that provides hundreds of jobs is replaced by an apartment complex.

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Premiered Feb 18

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Critics Consensus

One of China's most talented directors blurs the lines between non-fiction, drama, and musical theater in this vivid portrait of a country in cultural flux.

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Audience Member

Was it a drama or a documentary, I'm confused. But it was good.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/12/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Don't go looking for a plot. Instead, embrace this variety of stories from Chengdu, China, residents (real and imagined). In a world where we learn life lessons from "Humans of New York" and TED Talks, the experiences of the film's characters have mass appeal and poignancy.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/07/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Chengdu, oggi. La fabbrica 420 con la sua città operaia modello devono sparire per lasciar spazio a un complesso di appartamenti di lusso: "24 City". Passano sotto i nostri occhi tre generazioni e otto personaggi, dai vecchi operai ai nuovi ricchi, tra la nostalgia del socialismo da parte degli anziani e il desiderio di successo dei giovani. La storia delle loro vite e la storia della Cina. [cinematografo.it]

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/18/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I have been watching a few films that combines elements of documentary and narrative filmmaking lately. This one continues that trend. This film is a series of interviews of a group of people who have worked in Factory 420 in the Chengdu province of China which manufactured airplane parts. Some of the interviews are from real people. Some of it is from actors. Apart of Joan Chen's segments (who is excellent, her segments are the best in the film), I had trouble telling which is which. Some segments of course are better than others. But the film mostly works as a whole and it's gorgeously shot.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/17/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I'm not a fan of documentaries, so 24 City is not really the kind of film I find particularly interesting. That said it is a beautifully shot film, and is fairly interesting in the contrast presented between the three generations all with connections to factory 420. The film becomes even more interesting after discovering that the people interviewed were a combination of 'real' interviews and those performed by actors, calling into question the documentary aspects of the film and the manipulation that is always present within a film, brought forward by the filmmaker.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Another masterpiece by the great Jia Zhang Ke. Quietly absorbing, and ingeniously constructed as a hybrid of documentary and documentary style fiction. Highly recommended.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/12/23

Full Review

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Zhang-Ke Jia

Director

Jianbin Chen

Actor

Joan Chen

Little Flower

Liping Lu

Hao Dali

Tao Zhao

Su Na

Zhang-Ke Jia

Writer

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Richard Brody

New Yorker

Through interviews with retired workers and faux interviews with scripted characters, Jia brings long-repressed history to life on an intimate scale.

Jul 23, 2018

Full Review

Tony Rayns

Sight & Sound

24 City belies its documentary origins with overtly poetic film language: the film is an elegiac visual symphony of carefully framed compositions, trompe l'oeil camera movements, posed portraits, internal rhymes and mysterious vignettes.

Jun 18, 2012

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Liam Lacey

Globe and Mail

A blend of documentary and drama which is by turns movingly authentic and deliberately artificial.

Rated: 3/4

Sep 14, 2010

Full Review

David Walsh

World Socialist Web Site

Things are confused here, and the documentary/drama suffers. A lack of social and historical perspective lies at the heart of the problem.

Feb 13, 2021

Full Review

Mattie Lucas

From the Front Row

A fascinating and bittersweet film, its structure creating a wholly original and moving viewing experience that takes the plight of people half a world away, and makes it stunningly, hauntingly, our own.

Rated: 3/4

Aug 5, 2019

Full Review

Donald J. Levit

ReelTalk Movie Reviews

A fond, quietly ironic look at the past and the present facing the global problem of individual obsolescence and urban uprooting.

Feb 11, 2016

Full Review

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Synopsis

Documentary focusing on the lives of eight people affected after a thriving factory in China that provides hundreds of jobs is replaced by an apartment complex.

Director: Zhang-Ke Jia
Executive Producer: Keung Chow, Zhong-lun Ren, Yong Tang
Screenwriter: Zhang-Ke Jia, Yongming Zhai
Production Co: Shanghai Film Group
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Original Language: Chinese
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 18, 2010

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