
Republic. 2023. Singapore/China. Directed by Jin Jiang. North American premiere. Mecenat Award, Busan International Film Festival 2023. In Mandarin, English; English subtitles. 107 min.
Chinese hippie Eryang lives out his own version of communism in Republic, his six-square-meter apartment where young Beijing misfits hang about. Time comes to a halt for the drug-addled adolescents in this cluttered room, somewhere between psychedelic utopia and claustrophobic hell, dream and reality. Jia Jiang’s camera remains unobtrusive, an impressive achievement in such a cramped, swarming mess, as Eryang and his visitors wax poetic in a verbal cocktail of political philosophy and Internet babble. For visitors, Republic is a temporary escape; for Eryang, it is seemingly his only way of being, funded by online gambling and loans piled upon loans. Republic is a time capsule of the present for Chinese youth stuck in hopes and promises, afraid that if they open the curtains they might not like what they see.