Check out the trailer for ‘Caught by the Tides,’ a film over 20 years in the making from master Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, coming to theaters July 03, 2025, from Sideshow and Janus Films. Bilge Ebiri of New York Magazine writes, “This is a masterpiece from one of the world’s great directors. Think of it as his ‘Boyhood’, but he’s chronicling not just one person changing but an entire nation and culture.”The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous Caught by the Tides. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences—Caught by the Tides is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story.The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change: of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas.