Taming the Horse
Gu Tao
Release year: 2017
Run time: 124 mins
Film type: Documentary
Synopsis
When an old friend and filmmaker returns to the city with a video camera in hand on the eve of Dong’s 30th birthday, something in him stirs and he begins pouring out his most intimate thoughts. Over the course of a year, filmmaker GU Tao accompanies Dong in his struggles with family and society, sex and love, identity and survival as a young man in modern China. The resulting portrait is of a difficult and divisive young man; a sympathetic record on the human condition in contemporary China; a raw cry for truth, a longing for a better life.
Director biography
As a filmmaker, Gu Tao has also been involved in documentary editing. His editing work on the feature-length documentary The Last Spring received the Best Debut Award at the 2011 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, the Best Newcomer Award at the 2011 Montreal International Documentary Festival in Canada, and the Best Debut Award at the 2012 Cinéma du Réel Film Festival in France. The film was also screened at the 2012 Taiwan International Documentary Festival.
Taming the Horse is Gu Tao's first feature-length documentary, which earned him the Best Canadian Feature Award at the Montreal International Documentary Festival in Canada and the Golden Air Balloon Award for Best Film at the Nantes Film Festival in France. It was also selected for the International Competition section at the 2017 Visions du Réel International Film Festival in Switzerland and the International Section of the 2017 Leipzig Documentary and Animation Film Festival in Germany.