Variety is exclusively unveiling the first trailer for \u201cA Dance in Vain,\u201d the second feature from Lee Hong-chi following his 2023 Venice Lion of the Future Award-winning debut \u201cLove is a Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film has been selected for the Settimana Internazionale della Critica (SIC), the independent and parallel section of the Venice Film Festival organized by the Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI).<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n The drama stars Cici Wang as Monkey, a backstage theater worker facing unemployment after years of unrewarding work. She struggles to secure housing in Shanghai\u2019s competitive market while processing the grief from her partner Leo\u2019s suicide. Monkey is also trapped in repetitive daily patterns, seeking connection and understanding from others, only to be met with dismissive responses telling her to be thankful for what she has.<\/p>\n The project emerged from a deeply personal moment of urban disconnection for Lee. \u201cThere was a time when the city I lived in suddenly felt strange to me,\u201d the director explained. \u201cEven familiar friends and places I used to visit felt distant, in a way I couldn\u2019t explain. That feeling fascinated me. So I grabbed my camera and started filming.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes people I knew, sometimes strangers I met on the street, just capturing their lives as they were in that moment. I knew it wouldn\u2019t last. If I hesitated, the feeling would disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n Boutique international sales and distribution company Parallax Films has boarded world sales<\/a> on the Chinese title. The deal marks Parallax\u2019s second collaboration with Lee after handling international sales on \u201cLove is a Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch the trailer here:<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Variety is exclusively unveiling the first trailer for \u201cA Dance in Vain,\u201d the second feature from Lee Hong-chi following his 2023 Venice Lion of the Future Award-winning debut \u201cLove is a Gun.\u201d The film has been selected for the Settimana Internazionale della Critica (SIC), the independent and parallel section of the Venice Film Festival organized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1984264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[356808,356809,333428],"class_list":["post-1984263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-lee-hong-chi","tag-settimana-internazionale-della-critica","tag-venice-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\u2018A-Dance-in-Vain-Trailer-Unveiled-as-Lion-of-the.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1984263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1984264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1984263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1984263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1984263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}