
The latest edition of the Beautiful series, commissioned for the Hong Kong International Film Festival, which asks established and acclaimed directors from across Asia to contemplate the idea of what beauty really is in their own distinctive ways. Following on from Beautiful 2012, this selection sees Jia Zhangke (A Touch Of Sin, Mountains May Depart), Stanley Kwan (Rouge, Centre Stage), Alec Su (The Left Ear) and Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Ghost Theater) step up to the plate.

The latest edition of the Beautiful series, commissioned for the Hong Kong International Film Festival, which asks established and acclaimed directors from across Asia to contemplate the idea of what beauty really is in their own distinctive ways. Following on from Beautiful 2012, this selection sees Jia Zhangke (A Touch Of Sin, Mountains May Depart), Stanley Kwan (Rouge, Centre Stage), Alec Su (The Left Ear) and Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Ghost Theater) step up to the plate.
2016-03-23
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6.8In Chengdu, China, a retired female opera singer named Master Chang takes in a trio of young tenants into her boarding home. The tenants include a rock singer and a college student who has run away from home.
6.5In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
6.4In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
6.8Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.
5.8The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
7.2A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
6.6A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
6.8Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
5.9When motocross and heavy metal obsessed, 13-year-old Jacob's delinquent behavior forces CPS to place his little brother Wes with his aunt, Jacob and his emotionally absent father must finally take responsibility for their actions and each other in order to bring Wes home.
6.5When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
6.4Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.
7.5Having been released after serving his sentence, a funeral director accidentally crosses paths with a girl which brings about an unexpected change in his attitude towards life.
6.2After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
6.4Stanley manages his boxer brother Lion but when a devastating loss in the ring leaves the pair in debt, an opportunity to recoup the cash leads to a series of misadventures that threaten to break the bond between them.
5.8Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
7.0A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
6.8Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she's coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out
7.3A movie fan escapes from a labour camp during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and strikes up a relationship with a homeless female vagabond.
7.3When Tragedy Strikes three Families, their Destiny forces them on a coverging path and mercy as the challenges of their fate could also resurrect their beliefs