“Suggesting at different moments a backstage musical, a failed love story, a surreal comedy, and even a cartoon fantasy, this beautiful, corrosive, visionary masterpiece by Jia Zhangke is a frighteningly persuasive account of the current state of the planet.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader
A missive from the peak years of China’s integration with the global capitalist economy, THE WORLD is set in Beijing’s World Park, a sprawling theme park featuring scaled replicas of global landmarks. Migrant workers like Tao (Zhao Tao) and Taisheng (Chen Taisheng) staff the park and aspire toward better things: love, a dream career in the arts, any sort of future in a place where the ground perpetually shifts under one’s feet. Director Jia Zhangke adds moments of digital animation and stylized imagery to evoke the psychological effects of rapid modernization, as well as the vertiginous 21st-century experience of traveling the world without leaving home.
Awards & Nominations
2004 Toronto International Film Festival - Official Selection
2004 Venice Film Festival - Official Selection
2005 São Paulo International Film Festival - Winner, Critics Award
2005 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards - Winner, Best Foreign-Language Film
Contact Zones: Cinema of Globalization, 1989–2024
Fall 2026 Lecture Series
“We might have come to the end of something,” Adam Curtis reflected recently, referring to "globalization," which began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But just how well do we know this world that we were, until recently, living in? Brief lectures before screenings and open discussions afterwards will cover background on local histories related to films in the series as well as theories of globalization, neoliberalism, migration, and digital culture. Presented in collaboration with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism. Lecturer: Professor Daniel R. Quiles. Select titles offered with Sunday encores; encores do not include lecture.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu