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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 29 movies from Xstream Pictures
In A Song for You – a road movie and a music industry insider comedy, with lots of songs – young Ngawang leaves behind a nomadic existence on the Tibetan plateau for big city Lhasa nightclubs. His dream is to record an album and be heard around the country. Cutting an album costs money, which he doesn’t have. One day he meets a woman who looks just like his Loyiter, a talisman of the goddess of art and music. Impossible, says his father, as only the pure of heart meet her, only in their dreams. But, Ngawang perseveres. She takes him on a journey of discovery through life and love.
Oct 2020
The 43rd edition screens Neighbors, with five segments about the theme “neighbors”: not only about physical proximity, but also about relationships. In Brazil, Olga is a 90-year-old black woman who lost her husband one year ago; her neighbors, who come from different parts of the world, interrupt her grief. In Russia, an employee tries so hard to please his boss that he becomes inconvenient. An Indian woman, with the help of her male friend, decides to learn how to drive, an uncommon practice for women in the country. In China, an elderly, owner of an old and decadent barbershop, argues with his son, who wants to change the business. In South Africa, a group of homeless fights for the right to housing.
Oct 2019
Four people in different provinces are driven to violent ends: An angry miner is enraged by corruption in his village. A migrant discovers the possibilities of owning a firearm. A receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one job to the next.
Oct 2013
The film uses a documentary approach to tell the stories of 12 Chinese pioneers, chosen from the fields of business and the arts. The protagonists reflect upon their life journeys against the backdrop of modern China.
Jan 2011
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
Nov 2006
After hearing a loud ‘bang’ at daybreak, a Scottish woman begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia.
Sep 2021
Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
Sep 2018
A hare is let loose in the forest, a dog gives chase and the boy tears after them, his father in tentative pursuit. Minutes pass, the forest falls silent, and when the boy re-enters the frame, something has changed: he now speaks with the voice of his dead mother. Mingchung shows little surprise at Xiuying’s return, he even asks why she didn’t come earlier. She says she’ll leave again once she’s completed one simple task, to replant the tree that stands before their now abandoned home.
Jun 2017
Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.
Nov 2024
The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.
Oct 2015
Samnang, 20, faces the demolition of his lifelong home in Phnom Penh and the pressures from family, friends, and neighbors which arise and intersect in this moment of sudden change.
Dec 2021
Han Jie’s feature debut draws on his own experiences growing up in a desolate mining district in northern China’s Shanxi province. A Chinese road movie, Walking on the Wild Side charts a young gang’s continuous flights from one kind of trouble to the next. Mirroring the stark and barren landscape, the film relays the grim story of these delinquents’ dreams of liberty and easy money. Played by nonprofessional actors who are real life troublemakers, the film offers a realism that is at once oppressive, cruel, and sympathetic.
Mar 2006
A woman travels from southern China to Turin, Italy, to see her husband. But an unexpected departure leaves her to find herself again, and to find cinema.
May 2026
When gold medal lawyer Hu Gongping was having a secret meeting with his lover She Xiaoman, a body suddenly fell from the sky in the room. Hu Gongping called for help from his assistant Zhu Shiqi, but he didn't want to panic and blurt out several lies, causing a series of chaos! With the emergence of various "family members" such as Xiong Dali, Lin Luanfeng, and Shi Shi, the situation continues to escalate. As the matter is about to be exposed, how will this hilarious "accident" end?
Dec 2024
Focuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day.
Jul 2010
As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.
Sep 2008
Follows a mother who has spent most of her life in Dunhuang, a historic city in western China. With the help of artificial intelligence, she embarks on a journey that takes her from western to eastern China.
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At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.
Sep 2004
A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.
Oct 2017
An old Chinese woman visits Japan to find her missing daughter whom she adopted in post-WWII China. Her granddaughter and a retired Japanese policeman join her search.
Mar 2021