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Festival Report / Published 2026-11-01

Qiu Jiongjiong's Fuxi Reaches the Tokyo Competition With Four Meals

Qiu Jiongjiong began Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting during the pandemic and has brought it to Tokyo's competition. Two reports describe four eras, four meals and a cast speaking the Leshan dialect.

Q.QIBA Screen deskSource-backed article · 4 min read
Event date Prepared Published 2026-11-01
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THE SHORT VERSION

  • Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting is competing at the Tokyo International Film Festival; Variety reports that Qiu Jiongjiong began shaping it during the pandemic, when people wanted to gather around a table again.
  • The film runs 135 minutes and moves through four eras and four meals, with Lee Kang-sheng playing two elderly women and Lee Hong-chi playing the poet Su Dongpo, all in the Leshan dialect of Sichuan.
  • The Hollywood Reporter's review calls the film spicy and addictive if not easily digestible; neither report gives a commercial release date or a distributor.

A film that began with the wish to gather

Qiu Jiongjiong began shaping his new film during the pandemic, Variety reports. With the world forced to pause, he told the outlet, people felt an urgent desire to return to everyday life and to gather around a table. That idea became the starting point for Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting, which is competing at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The film connects four eras through food and shared meals. Variety says each chapter approaches the pleasure of eating, and its meaning, through its own fantastical vocabulary. An opening title card presents the word Fuxi as a phrase that evokes both the delight of food and the act of eating, the outlet reports. The Hollywood Reporter reads the same device slightly differently: its intertitles explain that the word can be a noun meaning delicious food or a verb signifying the savoring of such delicacies.

Four stories across more than 2,000 years

The Hollywood Reporter reviews the film as the follow-up to Qiu's well-received 2021 feature A New Old Play, and measures the new one at 135 minutes against that film's three hours. In its account the four stories cover more than 2,000 years of myth and history, each revolving around a special meal or banquet. The word itself is the hinge of the whole thing: a noun for good food, a verb for savoring it.

Variety frames the structure as a sequence rather than a single plot. It reports that Fuxi unfolds in sequence across four eras through four short stories, unlike A New Old Play, which focused on an individual's personal history. Qiu told the outlet that he used the meals at the center of each chapter to approach questions of life and death.

Lee Kang-sheng plays two elderly women

The casting is the part both reports dwell on. Variety reports that Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng, the longtime lead of Tsai Ming-liang's films, plays two elderly women from different eras, including a dying grandmother in the film's prehistoric chapter. The entire film is spoken in the Leshan dialect of Sichuan province, the outlet adds, and Lee worked with several dialect coaches.

Qiu explained the choice to Variety. “I was drawn to the mysterious quality about him, which felt perfectly suited to a character from ancient times,” he said, adding that it gave him the idea of asking Lee to play a woman. Lee, for his part, said the film may carry more dialogue than anything he has done, and that he could not understand a word of it.

Su Dongpo, a harvester and a fox at dinner

Lee Hong-chi, who also worked with dialect coaches, plays the Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo. “I only found out I was playing Su Dongpo when I got the script,” he told Variety. He said the dialect was a challenge for him too, but that he wanted to be part of the film because of its nonrealistic aesthetic and the world Qiu had created.

The Hollywood Reporter describes that chapter as the one where the film finds its weight. Set in China's medieval period, it gathers four fantastical creatures to remember Su Dongpo, a poet and gastronome whose honesty repeatedly got him into trouble with the powerful. Su's book boy prepares dishes associated with his master for a harvester who ferries souls to the underworld, a water spirit, an older woman and a fox in human form.

A film crew, a sun and a moon

The segments do not share a plot, so The Hollywood Reporter says Qiu ties them together with a framing device about a film crew making each one. The tales are linked by the presence of Sol and Luna, played by Wen Ke and Xiao Luxi', both wearing massive sun- and moon-shaped headpieces. The reviewer calls the result bizarre but held aloft by what she describes as Qiu's relentless visual brio.

The review's verdict is warm and qualified. Its bottom line reads: “Spicy and addictive, if not easily digestible.” It notes that much of the dialogue is reportedly in Sichuan dialect, a nuance native speakers will appreciate more than international viewers, and that the subtitles carry the mix of high and low culture when peasants, aristocrats and filmmakers share the frame.

Tokyo competition, a Chengdu show and what comes next

The Hollywood Reporter lists the venue as the Tokyo Film Festival competition and gives the running time as 2 hours 15 minutes. Variety reports that Fuxi was Qiu's first time working with professional actors, an experience he says has broadened his creative ambitions. The outlet also records his solo exhibition, Qiu Jiongjiong: Fuxi: A Feast for the Universe, at Chengdu's A4 Art Museum through 31 January.

Neither report says when the film will open commercially in Japan, mainland China or anywhere else, and neither carries a distributor's release plan. Variety says Qiu is still developing his next project and has yet to settle on its subject or medium. What the two reports establish is a competition slot, a 135-minute cut and the body of work behind it. Related coverage on this site includes the Tokyo festival entry A Journey There, Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, the 2026 BFI London Film Festival winners and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards' best film.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. Pandemic-Era Longing to Gather Fed Qiu Jiongjiong's Tokyo Competition Title 'Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting' — Variety
  2. 'Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting' Review: Whimsical Chinese Film Explores Myth and History Through a Series of Tasty Treats — The Hollywood Reporter
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