Upstream

Upstream (逆行人生, 2024) is a Chinese drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by and starring Xu Zheng. He plays Gao Zhilei, a forty-something IT professional whose impulsive decision one day strips away everything he thought was stable.

Gao Zhilei ends up riding deliveries for a gig platform — the kind of service he once understood from the algorithm side, not the road. His father is seriously ill, his daughter's tuition can't wait, and the routing system has no interest in any of that. He applies his data skills to optimise the work. The hours still don't compress.

Xu Zheng shoots with feeling but without sentimentality. The film is about middle-aged men who quietly fall out of the economy — ageism in hiring, the absence of any safety net in platform labour, the silence of a family breadwinner with no good news to bring home. Grittier than most Chinese studio drama and more specific about what financial ruin actually looks like day to day. Stream Upstream (2024) on iFILM.