A trailer has landed for “Dead Pigs,” Cathy Yan’s feature directorial debut. Before taking the reins on 2020 Harley Quinn standalone pic “Birds of Prey,” the writer-director made a critically acclaimed dramedy about a pig farmer, salon owner, busboy, rich girl, and an expat architect whose lives collide under stranger-than-fiction circumstances. “Dead Pigs” made its world premiere at the 2018 edition of Sundance Film Festival and launches on MUBI February 12.
The spot reveals little about the film’s plot, but its official synopsis helps fill in the blanks. Based on a true events, “Dead Pigs” is described as “a bitingly humorous social satire about the trials and tribulations connecting a disparate group of characters as thousands of dead pigs mysteriously float down river towards a rapidly modernizing Shanghai, China.” The film “speaks to our universal struggle with identity in the age of globalization, its diverse voices reflecting the future of American cinema — as it deals with prescient and timely conversations around equality, capitalism, and basic human connection in an increasingly divided world.”
The trailer sees a group of salon works shouting in unison: “I am the best! I am talented! I am unique! I will succeed!”
“I wanted to make sense of my dual identity as both Chinese and American, and I was fascinated by China and the massive change it was undergoing in my lifetime. The immediate inspiration was the dead pigs incident itself,” Yan told us in a soon-to-be published interview. “I felt it to be both deeply cinematic and amazingly symbolic.”
“Dead Pigs'” cast includes Vivian Wu (“The Joy Luck Club”), Zazie Beetz (“Atlanta”), and Meng Li (“The Bad Kids”).
Yan just signed on to write and direct “The Freshening,” a sci-fi pic about an injection that makes everyone see others as the same race and gender as themselves.
