Art College 1994

2025, Movie, 2h 6min

Strikingly detailed, hand-drawn animation vividly evokes the idle, idealistic world of slacker youth in the precious days before adult responsibility in Liu Jian’s charmingly wistful slice-of-life gem. In 1990s China, a motley gang of art students fill their days with inchoate musings about aesthetics, philosophy, and the promised “good” life after graduation. Caught between tradition and modernity as they take their first steps into adulthood, they now have to choose who they want to become. Xiaojun epitomizes the quintessential romantic, fashioning himself after grunge idol Kurt Cobain, while his partner in crime, Rabbit, keeps the group’s aspirations grounded with his unfiltered wit. Featuring voice work from renowned directors Bi Gan and Jia Zhangke, ART COLLEGE 1994 serves as a captivating lens through which we glimpse the eternal promise and confusion of youth and the contradictions of a country anticipating the turn of the globalized millennium.

Country: China

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IMDb rating

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6.4

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9.0

Reviews

Critic Ryan Coleman

rated

The film vividly captures the tremble of youth on the cusp of adulthood, while at the same time painting at the fringes a specific portrait of China on the cusp of its major transformation to a market-led economy.

Read full review at Slant Magazine