When our economic climate dramatically takes a turn for the worse, what is its toll on our emotional wellbeing? Can ordinary people under extraordinary stress be expected to foresee the consequences of their actions? These are questions that visionary filmmaker Jian Zhang-ke (A Touch of Sin) posits in his latest film.

Mountains May Depart’s timeline spans the past, present and future of Tao, a young beauty living a Chinese village forced to choose between two men who are both madly in love with her: Liangzi, a shy coal miner, and Zhang, an extroverted gas station proprietor. It’s 1999, and China’s economy has begun to skyrocket. Tao marries Zhang and they have a son, Dollar. When they divorce in 2014, Zhang is a successful magnate about to move his business to Australia. Tao allows Dollar to go live with his father abroad. Eleven years later, in his adoptive country, Dollar no longer speaks his first language and barely communicates with his now bankrupt father. All that he remembers of his mother is her name.

This is a complex exploration of core values in conflict, of love and freedom, loyalty and obligation, Jia’s exceptional ability to meld genres and convey narrative through a various cinematic tools make Mountains May Depart at once resonant and hugely entertaining. – Orlando Rojas