Beijing Bicycle

Beijing Bicycle (十七岁的单车, 2001) — watch online on iFILM, a social drama from Wang Xiaoshuai that took the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Guei, sixteen, leaves the countryside for Beijing and lands a courier job. He is nearly done paying off his company-issued bike. Then it vanishes.

He tracks it down — but the bike belongs to someone else now: Jian, a city schoolboy who bought it second-hand and has his own claim. Neither will let go. What starts as a dispute over a bicycle opens out into a fracture between migrant China and urban China, each running on its own unwritten code.

A China-France-Taiwan co-production featuring Zhou Xun, the film sits in the Sixth Generation of Chinese cinema — street-level, without a single easy consolation. Stream Beijing Bicycle (2001) online on iFILM.