Na Jiazuo, one of the few Chinese directors to make it to the Cannes Film Festival this year, says he learned from the best in the business. His “Streetwise” (aka “Gaey Wa’r”) unspools in Un Certain Regard and is eligible for the Camera d’Or, reflecting Na’s status as a rookie feature director.
The picture is a gritty, largely nocturnal, portrait of a group of young adults in an unfashionable town as they come to terms with life’s uneasy lot. In particular, it focuses on a 21-year-old man who becomes inured in violence as he becomes a debt collector’s henchman in order to pay off his father’s hospital bills.
Na calls “Streetwise” “a film about struggle,” but puts the characters’ challenges into context. “At the beginning of the 2000s a lot of people swarmed to the big cities from the remote parts of China. But there was also a large group that stayed behind. Some could not get to the big cities. Others chose to stay out of principle, or because they had an emotional connection to that place. This is film about those people,” he told Variety.
In “Streetwise” the lead character experiences his father dying, is burdened with the inability to be with or escape with the woman he loves, and has an emotional collapse. Yet Na says the film is also fundamentally optimistic.
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“Happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin. There is no such thing as absolute pessimism or absolute happiness. Every person will go through different struggles during their life. And, each time they emerge from one struggle, that creates positive energy,” he says.
That character arc is akin to the personal development Na himself experienced in making the movie over a period of five years.
Na is a graduate of the middle school of the Beijing Central Academy of Arts, but says he learned far more since he had been taken under the wing of ace director Guan Hu, whose “The Eight Hundred” was the top-grossing film worldwide last year, with $461 million at the B.O., according to Box Office Mojo.
Calling himself “lost” prior to “Streetwise,” Na says that having a mentor is extremely important.
“I started in my twenties and finished the film in my thirties. During that time, Guan Hu often said things to me. Often, only later did I come to understand what he meant. He was a great communicator. And would make subtle advice. Sometimes these things only revealed themselves to me during the post-production phase,” Na said.
“Streetwise” was produced by Seventh Art Pictures, a film and TV production company owned by Guan Hu and his wife Liang Jing that has made a specialty of discovering young talent. Liang appears in the film as an actor and is also its executive producer.
“Guan Hu was very young director when we met. He didn’t have money, resources, or help to make films. He managed. But it was very to me clear that he could have done with the help,” Liang told Variety.
“I was an actress, so I know that when you are trying to create something you need to try to preserve a certain purity abut artistic expression. Our company aim is to help them preserve that. I’ve seen good filmmakers struggle. Allowing them not to lose their creative expression is our role.”
Na will be in Cannes to present the film, which screens on July 13, but due to a busy production schedule neither Guan or Liang will be able to join him.
“ ‘Streetwise’ is a film about young people’s desires and dreams. My next film will explore the same theme. But hopefully deliver on another level,” Na said. “We are also looking at another joint project (with Guan Hu).”