DC Area Premiere

***Advanced tickets for Tuesday, June 17 at 9:00 p.m. have sold out.  Standby tickets will be available at the AFI Silver box office approximately 45 minutes prior to showtime.  Tickets are not guaranteed and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.*** 

Yung Chang’s exquisitely photographed and richly detailed UP THE YANGTZE captures an indelible image of a modern China at the crossroads of rich tradition and blind progress.

An elegant cruise ship glides along the Yangtze River, offering its mostly foreign passengers a comfortable and impressive view of China in transition. But for 16-year-old Yu Shui, whose family lives on the banks of the river, the view is strikingly different. The imminent completion of the massive Three Gorges Dam, one of the biggest and most controversial engineering projects in history, will put an end to an entire way of life, displacing more than a million residents and destroying numerous cultural and archaeological sites.

With their livelihood in jeopardy and no money for Yu Shui’s education, her parents encourage her to find work in one of the region's few growth industries— the Yangtze River cruises. The bittersweet irony of Yu Shui’s reality is crystallized when the boat on which she caters to tourists glides past her family’s tiny shack, soon to be engulfed by waters rising at an alarming rate.

Chang sensitively examines the personal impact of this mammoth industrial project and provides a final, mournful snapshot of a cultural landscape disappearing before our eyes. His haunting film leaves one to wonder what is truly gained by such a massive project that first requires so much to be lost.

—Sky Sitney