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Hao ji le

Have a Nice Day | Einen schönen Tag noch
Competition 2017
A city in southern China and a bag containing a million yuan draws several people from diverse backgrounds with different personal motives into a bloody conflict. Philosophising gangster bosses, ageing hitmen, men and women who are tired of the struggle to survive – anyone who happens to have the bag holds on to it tightly, as if it were a lifeline. Hao ji le is a black comedy; the film’s inscrutable, laconic humour holds up a magnifying glass to attitudes to life and social conditions. Humankind’s constant greed meets a deeply insecure country in transition. The reduced realism of the film’s animated tableau heightens and stylises the mood in today’s China, caught between stasis and a new beginning. The protagonists of this macabre dance wander, strangely lost, through precisely drawn but radically changing cityscapes. The signs and symbols of capitalism impose themselves everywhere, but most people are excluded from the life these signs promise. And Mao Zedong’s image still graces the banknotes.
by Liu Jian
with Yang Siming, Cao Kou, Ma Xiaofeng, Zhu Changlong, Cao Kai, Zheng Yi People’s Republic of China 2017 Mandarin 75’ Colour

With

  • Yang Siming (Uncle Liu)
  • Cao Kou (Yellow Eye)
  • Ma Xiaofeng (Thin Skin)
  • Zhu Changlong (Xiao Zhang)
  • Cao Kai (Lao Zhao)
  • Zheng Yi (Second Sister)

Crew

Written and Directed by Liu Jian
Animation Liu Jian
Editing Militia Xiao Liu
Music The Shanghai Restoration Project
Sound Design Li Danfeng
Sound Gao Rui Feng
Casting Liu Jian
Production Manager Wang Lin
Producers Yang Cheng, Liu Jian
Executive Producers Yang Cheng, Liu Jian

World Sales

Memento International

http://www.memento-films.com http://www.memento-films.com

Memento Films International

Produced by

Nezha Bros. Pictures

Le-joy Animation Studio

Additional information

EDKO Films (Asian Sales)
Hong Kong, People's Republic of China
chiujulian@edkofilm.com.hk
www.cinema.com.hk

Photos

Press Conference

Red Carpet

Liu Jian

Liu Jian studied Chinese landscape painting and graduated from the Nanjing University of the Arts in 1993. Over the past two decades, his work has drawn on a range of media and aesthetic approaches and has been presented at major exhibitions both in China and abroad. In 1995, he began making works of animation and in 2007 he independently established the Le-joy Animation Studio. His first feature-length animation work, Piercing I, premiered at Holland Animation Film Festival and received numerous prestigious awards at film festivals across Asia and Europe.

Filmography (animated films)

2010 Citong wo (Piercing I) 2017 Hao ji le 2011 Chaos & Order; short film · Face; short film · Look At This Man; short film 2017 Hao ji le (Have a Nice Day) 2022 Art College 1994

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023