(Ji Huang and Ryuji Otsuka, 2022, Japan, 148 minutes)

In their third collaboration with young actress Yao Honggui (Foolish Bird, Egg and Stone), wife-and-husband team Ji Huang and Ryuji Otsuka’s Stonewalling is an at once sprawling and intimate look at China’s gig economy circa 2019 and 2020. Honggui plays 20-year-old Lynn, in school to become a flight attendant and learning English alongside her feckless boyfriend Zhang (Liu Long). After a tip about making easy money donating her eggs, Lynn finds out that she’s pregnant and moves back in with her parents (played by Ji Huang’s real-life parents) above their clinic, where the mother is a gynecologist. Thus begins a strange and frustratingly relatable journey as Lynn tries to navigate her own becoming while the rest of the world sees her as little more than a commodity.

In Hunanese with English subtitles.