Synopsis
"Aftershock" (唐山大地震, 2010) is Feng Xiaogang's sweeping family drama, available to watch online on iFILM. The tagline says it all: 23 seconds, 32 years. One summer night in the industrial city of Tangshan, the ground heaves and flattens everything in under half a minute. Beneath a single slab of concrete lie twin seven-year-olds — and the rescuers can only pull one out alive.
Their mother makes the call no parent should: she names her son. The daughter, given up for dead, somehow lives through the night and is taken away by strangers, never told her family survived. From there the story splits in two and runs for decades — a mother (Xu Fan) hollowed out by guilt, a daughter (Zhang Jingchu) who can't forgive a choice she overheard as a child.
Adapted from Zhang Ling's novel, the film became one of China's biggest box-office hits and the country's Oscar submission that year. Feng resists cheap tears; he simply watches how a single disaster reshapes an ordinary household across a lifetime. Heavy, unsentimental, and worth the ache. Stream "Aftershock" (2010) on iFILM.
Starring
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