*MUSIC*: Du Wi *International competition* The state control in China regulates absurdly many areas of life. A strict housing and family policy is part of this. Li Xuelian and Qin Yuhe have discovered their dream apartment, but it is reserved for singles only. They pretend a divorce to circumvent the regulation. Instead of marrying her again, Qin Yuhe quickly moves into the beautiful apartment with his lover and Li Xuelian is left with nothing. Deceived and humiliated, she does not stand for it and seeks through a judicial review. A bizarre struggle with the Chinese judiciary and corrupt authorities begins, which is to last a decade. *FENG XIAOGANG*, known in China as a blockbuster director, chooses a satirical and very amusing look at the strict rules of the system and the people who flounder in it. The work with *FAN BING BING* (known in the west through X-MEN), an absolute superstar in her home country, as well as the success abroad – as the festival surprise, he won the *"GOLDEN SHELL"* in *SAN SEBASTIAN* – have helped the aesthetically exceptional film through the Chinese censorship with only a few curtailments. In front of a home crowd, the film immediately advanced to a blockbuster. Did it hit a special nerve perhaps?

_“[…] I refer to Feng Xiaogang’s class comedy I Am Not Madame Bovary as painterly, in which Feng’s studied use of unconventional aspect ratios are as distinctive a painter’s brushstrokes.”_ - Mallory Andrews, Movie Mezzanine _“Sublime visual eloquence […] part Scarlet Letter, part Keystone Cops, part miniature landscape painting—all with plot twists worthy of Thomas Hardy.”_ - Screen