In a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. This monster, adrift in reverie, clings to visions no one else can see – until a woman appears. Gifted with the rare power to perceive these illusions for what they truly are, she chooses to enter the monster’s dreams, determined to uncover the truth that lies hidden within.
EN
“Underlying all of this is a traversal of the cinematic dispositif itself, since the Fantasmers, like dreamers, are both creators of images and their viewers. It is precisely in this overlap between activity and passivity, between spectator and object, between watching and being watched, that the film reaches its zenith. The culmination arrives with the separation of these functions, when the gaze detaches from a vampire (one of the incarnations of the Fantasmers) who finally becomes an object within the image and no longer simply its point of view. It is in this moment of isolating the gaze that we should read not only the final long take (by now a stylistic signature of Bi Gan’s cinematic ‘endings’) but also the fulfillment of cinema’s historical mission: to emerge from fantasy – literally burning the spectators, as if they were wax – so that the gaze might be liberated from its twentieth-century form.
What comes next? Not death, Bi Gan seems to suggest, distancing himself from the nostalgic, elegiac tones so often invoked in discussions of cinema’s end. What comes next is rather cinema’s resurrection. With this resurrection, cinema will likely assume a different form, toward which Bi Gan – through his increasingly art-like, contemporary aestheticization of the image – is already moving.”
Pietro Bianchi1
Patrick Brzeski: How does your development process proceed? The ideas behind your films are so closely intertwined with their cinematic expression. Do you write in images? Do you end up improvising a lot throughout the filmmaking process?
Bi Gan: I write everywhere. I spend time in different cities, but mainly Beijing and Guangzhou. As for how I write – yes, I do write in images. When I came up with the structure for this movie, I divided it into six chapters, each representing one of the senses. The six chapters span from the early 20th century to today, and each reflects a cinematic style from its time. For example, when I wrote the first chapter, I envisioned a silent movie in my mind. The core of the film is about a cinema monster, a Phantasm, that journeys through time. Each chapter is centered on a different sense – vision, sound, taste, smell, touch, and mind – and each is filmed in a style that matches a cinematic era. The second is film noir; the third shows the monster’s transformation; the fourth tells a specific story, and the fifth is about the end of the world. The first chapter is silent and about sight, the second is about sound, and so on. As the Phantasm loses each sense, it moves closer to disappearing from the world. In the beginning, I didn’t think of the Phantasm as a cinema monster. But as I developed the story, I realized it had to be one. Its journey through different film styles made that inevitable. That’s some of how it developed.
Bi Gan in conversation with Patrick Brzeski2
- 1Pietro Bianchi, “Cannes 2025 Dispatch, Pt. 2: Film’s Resurrection,” e-flux Notes, 28 May 2025.
- 2Patrick Brzeski, “Chinese Auteur Bi Gan Breaks Down ‘Resurrection,’ His Mesmerizing Ode to Cinema’s Enigmas,” The Hollywood Reporter, 13 June 2025.
