Jia Zhang-Ke
China

Filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke (1970, Fenyang) breaks away from previous generations’ historical dramas and political idealisations to convey other kinds of realities. He depicts episodes in the life and loyalties of a teenage pickpocket (Xiao Wu, 1997); working conditions and workers facing unemployment, aging and broken state promises (24 City, 2008); the displaced and soon-to-be displaced figuring out how to proceed as public buildings are demolished, houses submerge under the rising waters of the Three Gorges Dam and human ties are stretched to the limit (Still Life, 2006). The realities of home, belonging and security for ordinary people in China unfold in parallel narratives amid the demolition of social fabric and the erasure of memory and connection in the name of economic progress.
Jia combines humanistic realism with striking aesthetics and rich cultural texture. He uses local people and professional actors, dialects, on-site sounds, improvisation and interpretive imagination to express individual experiences as realistically as possible. A master of the long shot that gradually fills with subtle gestures and details, Jia makes time palpable and delights in ironies and allusions: a spaceship lift-off, a tightrope-walker between high-rises. He captures universal human experiences that exist regardless of context, and shows Chinese ways of coping, maintaining deeply held values, surviving with the quiet dignity, restraint and resourcefulness of the ‘still living’.
Jia Zhang-Ke is honoured for the outstanding aesthetic and intellectual qualities of his work, for his committed social engagement in focusing on the realities of ordinary contemporary lives, for his significant contribution to local cultural identity and confidence, and for creatively transcending and altering the frontiers of reality.

Credits for the editing of the film:
Design - Martin Pyper
Music composer - Pieter Straatman
Sound - Music Skeleton
Camera Jury - Coen Stroeve
Gaffer Jury - Willem van der Eerden
Electrician Jury - Artyom Zakharenko
Sound Jury - Jasnai Jansen
Make up Jury - Scarlett Kraidy
Interviewer Jury - Jelani Isaacs
Ass. Producer - Deniz Baser
Editor - Sander Brenninkmeijer
Production - Brenninkmeijer & Isaacs