The Symphony of the Heavenly City

Shanghai, the largest city in China, has 12 million inhabitants and 3000 skyscrapers. The city is sinking under the weight of those impressive buildings, although there are 2000 more to be built soon. This Croatian director, who in the past created an impressive opus in unconventional filmmaking, is now back to pure cinema, where moods and contemplation are the main goals. In this personal impression of the city, he uses only the language of cinema and evokes the history of Shanghai. By interweaving this history with today's reality, the meaning of the city comes to life in a very special way. In the archival footage, even a colour intervention has been performed (a red flag in a black-and-white marching crowd), and the sound is multi-layered. Combining all that in a very inventive way with carefully chosen shots of people and the situations in the city today, the director creates a specific atmosphere. Dividing the whole film into chapters like The Seventh Door, The Dragon's Effect, The Lonely Men and Above Time, this non-narrative film is structured. There is no dialogue or voice-over, only carefully edited images and sounds, cross-fades and overlaps, and an encounter of all these cinematic elements produces a surprising experience.