An Elephant Sitting StillMovies like An Elephant Sitting Still
- Key Features:
- Existentialism, Social commentary, Despair, Urban decay, Escape, Obsession, China, Downward spiral, Elephant, Longing, Philosophical, Poverty
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Art house enthusiasts, Cerebral film viewers, International cinema fans, Philosophical drama lovers
- Emotional Arc:
- Despair → Bleak
An Elephant Sitting Still

In the northern Chinese city of Manzhouli, they say there is an elephant that simply sits and ignores the world. Manzhouli becomes an obsession for the protagonists of this film, a longed-for escape from the downward spiral in which they find themselves.
An Elephant Sitting Still
Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

A look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife.

A monumental windstorm and an abused horse's refusal to work or eat signal the beginning of the end for a poor farmer and his daughter.

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

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.

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.

A psychiatrist is drawn into a complex mind game when he questions a disturbed patient about the disappearance of a colleague.

A pig farmer, a busboy, a salon owner, an expat architect and a jaded rich girl cross paths as thousands of dead pigs float down the Yangtze River toward Shanghai.

In this captivating Depression-era melodrama, impetuous veterinary student Jacob Jankowski joins a celebrated circus as an animal caretaker but faces a wrenching dilemma when he's transfixed by angelic married performer Marlena.

A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.

On the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a journey together.

Qinawi, a physically challenged peddler who makes his living selling newspapers in the central Cairo train station, is obsessed with Hanuma, an attractive young woman who sells drinks. While she jokes with him about a possible relationship, she is actually in love with Abu Siri, a strong and respected porter at the station who is struggling to unionize his fellow workers to combat their boss' exploitative and abusive treatment.

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

A chilling depiction of a series of violent killings during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.

Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment.

A movie fan escapes from a labour camp during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and strikes up a relationship with a homeless female vagabond.

The story of a man who feels happy only when he is unhappy: addicted to sadness, with such need for pity, that he’s willing to do everything to evoke it from others. This is the life of a man in a world not cruel enough for him.

A young couple is pushed to the limits of sanity as they attempt to be reunited amid the chaos of a pandemic outbreak. The streets erupt into violence and depravity, as those infected are driven to enact the most cruel and ghastly things imaginable.

Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

Indifferent to the notion of inheriting his father's estate, a restless, aging New Yorker passes time with his friends in games of mock sincerity, irreverence, and recreational cruelty towards those around them.

Jiney is an popular art and photography student, but despite winning an award, she remains unhappy with her work. After photographing the aftermath of a fatal car accident, she finds herself obsessed with death. Suffering from morbid throughts, flashbacks of an incident from her youth when she was sexually abused by some young boys start to appear.

In 1942, Henan Province was devastated by one of the most tragic famines in modern Chinese history, resulting in the deaths of at least three million men, women and children. Although the primary cause of the famine was a severe drought, it was exacerbated by locusts, windstorms, earthquakes, epidemic disease and the corruption of the ruling Kuomintang government.

Two Chinese miners, who make money by killing fellow miners and then extorting money from the mine owner to keep quiet about the "accident", happen upon their latest victim. But one of them begins to have second thoughts.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

After a five-year hiatus, psychiatrist Yehia returns to work at Abbasiya Hospital. He’s assigned to evaluate a patient who turns out to be his old friend. As events unfold, Yehia uncovers dark secrets that challenge his understanding of reality.

Shenxiu has felt a deep sadness since her mother left. A storm plunges her into a dreamlike world of swirling colour. Led by the Hyjinx, and joined by inventive underwater chef Nanhe, she embarks on a quest to find solace in the Eye of the Deep Sea.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Believing that the world will end that very day, three mental patients Coco, Tsumuji, and Satoru set out upon a journey. Walking upon the tops of the walls of the city, they seek to find a picnic spot with the best vantage point to view the final event.

Two penniless orphans, Black and White, struggle to survive on the mean streets of Treasure Town. When a megacorporation threatens to tear down the town to build an amusement park, Black and White engage in the fight of their life.

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.

Under the sun, the heavenly beauty of grasslands will soon be covered by the raging dust of mines. Facing the ashes and noises caused by heavy mining , the herdsmen have no choice but to leave as the meadow areas dwindle. In the moonlight, iron mines are brightly lit throughout the night. Workers who operate the drilling machines must stay awake. The fight is tortuous, against the machine and against themselves. Meanwhile, coal miners are busy filling trucks with coals. Wearing a coal-dust mask, they become ghostlike creatures. An endless line of trucks will transport all the coals and iron ores to the iron works. There traps another crowd of souls, being baked in hell. In the hospital, time hangs heavy on miners' hands. After decades of breathing coal dust, death is just around the corner. They are living the reality of purgatory, but there will be no paradise.

Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

Chen Sheng goes off in search of his nephew who has been abandoned by his father. Along the way, he encounters numerous people from his past and also those from his future.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987.

A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.

A young fighter named Kham must go to Australia to retrieve his stolen elephant. With the help of a Thai-born Australian detective, Kham must take on all comers, including a gang led by an evil woman and her two deadly bodyguards.

Precocious young Harriet and her older sister Gwen live at their mother's motel in small-town New Hampshire. Harriet dreams of a life beyond her inattentive family and the stultifying town. A mentally disabled man named Ricky comes to stay at the motel, and Harriet finds him kinder and more interesting than anyone she has ever met. After tragedy strikes, Harriet and Ricky cling to each other ever more tightly.

A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.

Aydın is a hotel owner and a retired actor in rural Turkey. As winter emerges he begins navigating the conflicts within the relationships with his wife, sister and existence.

Liu Xing a brilliant Chinese student, arrives at University and makes the transition into American life with the help of Joanna Silver. Xing joins a cosmology group working to create a model of the origins of the universe. He is obsessed with the study of dark matter and a theory that conflicts with the group's model. When he begins to make breakthroughs of his own, he encounters obstructions.

After a massive earthquake, only one apartment building is left standing in Seoul, South Korea. Survivors flock to Hwang Gung Apartments, but residents cannot cope with the increasing numbers.

Pan Xiao, a young lawyer, goes to a rural small village settled in the western desert lands of China to handle the case of a falcon poacher who has ran over a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning and forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward. Then, he just drives back home, but the return will not be an easy one.

Backed into a corner by mounting debts, a youth agrees to submit himself to a high stakes game of chance in international waters aboard a disused warship.

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

Jason and his wife, Sarah, leave their adopted home of Shanghai and travel to Vancouver, British Columbia, for his uncle's funeral, staying with his Aunt Mei. Already disoriented, Jason and Sarah are unnerved when their son, Sam, begins seeing ghosts and violent deaths. After Sam is hospitalized, Sarah consults with a pharmacist who's well-informed about Chinese mythology and who tells her that supernatural forces threaten her son.

In 2030 the world is in a permanent state of economic recession and facing serious environmental problems as a result of global warming.

Every person you meet is fighting a battle you don't know anything about. Lena comes to the countryside to collect and take things out of the house she has sold. neighbor igor interferes with her plans. he sits in a tree around the clock and screams driving lena crazy.

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his "owner" as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London.

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained.

An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

After a Vietnamese woman dies in a car crash in Saigon, her brother-in-law and her young son transport her body back to the former’s hometown in rural Vietnam, where they plan to give her a funeral.

Left alone to clean up a 6-meter-deep deserted pool, Day falls asleep on an inflatable raft. When he wakes, the water level has sunk so low that he can't climb out on his own. Stuck in the pool, Day screams for help, but the only thing that hears him is a creature from a nearby crocodile farm.

Aunt Mei's famous homemade dumplings provide amazing age-defying qualities popular with middle-aged women. But her latest customer, a fading actress, is determined to find out what the secret ingredient is.

Flora is a circus elephant who can no longer perform her tricks. The night before she's scheduled to be euthanized, the circus owner's 14-year old daughter, Dawn, sneaks Flora from the circus. All that stands between them and the safety of the elephant preserve is two hundred kilometers of woods, one raging river, two elephant hunters and the fear of not making it.

Ma Chenggang, a wealthy man in Xihong City, worries that his eldest son is too spoiled to succeed him. Determined to raise a capable successor, he takes an unconventional approach. They conceal their wealth, moving the family to a dilapidated neighborhood, and maintain an illusion of poverty, so that his son could develop qualities such as hard work, knowledge, careful budgeting, physical fitness, and perseverance.

Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

Six months after losing her only child in the Southeast Asia tsunami, Jeanne is convinced she sees him in a film about orphans living in the jungles.

The lives of a macho butcher, his wife, a lonely waitress, a sadist and a flophouse manager intersect in Recife, Brazil.

A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.

Have you ever wondered "What is the meaning of life? Why do we exist?" The answer to this vexing question is now within your reach! You'll find it in a small yet amazing booklet, which will explain, in easy to follow, simple terms your reason for being! The booklet, printed on the finest paper, contains illuminating, exquisite colour pictures, and could be yours for a mere $9.99.

Michele Apicella lives in Rome, in an apartment paid for by his father. Abandoned by his wife and his son Andrea, he occupies his time acting in an experimental theater company under the artistic direction of his friend Fabio.

An abandoned cat embarks on a journey to discover the most precious thing in the world.

The story of Hong Kong, from New Year's Day to June 30th, 1997, when the British left their colony and turned it over to the People's Republic of China.

A philosophy teacher restless with the need to do something with his life meets a young woman suspected of driving an artist to his death. He finds the very simple Cecilia irritating but develops a sexual rapport with her. Obsessed with the need to own and tormented by her inability to respond to him, he becomes increasingly violent in a quest he can't name - a quest that slowly begins to undermine his certainties.

Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.

It's a sweltering summer, but Jung-won, a terminally ill, thirty-something photographer, is already in the winter of his life when he begins a tentative romance with a young traffic cop who doesn't know about his condition. Is their relationship doomed before it even begins?

Young student Bai Xuemei is cheated and sold as a wife by human traffickers to a remote village. Raped and beaten, she leads the life of a sex slave and child-bearer with no hope of escape because of the villagers apathy and selfishness.

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.

A seventeen-year-old country boy working in Beijing as a courier has his bicycle stolen, and finds it with a schoolboy his age.

Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.

A group of performing art troupe members each face their own trials and tribulations in Chengdu; from escaping a family scandal to dealing with unrequited love, each experiences rejection that shapes their lives.

In a deserted rich house, a couple of amphibians explore their surroundings and follow their primal instincts.

A struggling circus crew gets deceived by its former partner, as it embarks on a tour in Thailand. During the journey through a Southeast Asian rainforest, they encounter attacks by a giant python. They meet a mysterious man named Jeff who offers to help, but they soon realize he's a poacher. As they search for Jeff's boat, they face life-and-death struggles with the python and Jeff himself.

In feudal Korea, a group of starving villagers grow weary of the orders handed down to them by their controlling king and set out to use a deadly monster under their control to push his armies back.

A man is on his way home when the poorly constructed tunnel he is driving through collapses, leaving him trapped leaving himself for the unexpected whilst emergency services struggle to help.

An assassin goes through obstacles as he attempts to escape his violent lifestyle despite the opposition of his partner, who is secretly attracted to him.

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

Under the Han River lives Crocodile, a rugged member of the lumpenproletariat who exists from schemes and stealing. His position as a scavenger of society undermines South Korea’s boasts of its newfound economic position as an Asian Tiger. One day, Crocodile finds a girl floating in his river.

Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines.

When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine.

After an alien ship crash lands in a Russian city, many who see the inside and the occupants start to question their own existence while others demand the aliens leave Earth.

A woman inexplicably finds herself cut off from all human contact when an invisible, unyielding wall suddenly surrounds the countryside. Accompanied by her loyal dog Lynx, she becomes immersed in a world untouched by civilization and ruled by the laws of nature.

A visually stunning documentary that reflects human's relationship to other species on Earth as humanity becomes more and more isolated from Nature.

Wang Bianlian is an aging street performer known as the King of Mask for his mastery of Sichuan Change Art in a true story. His wife left him with and infant son over 30 years ago. The son died from illness at age 10. This left Wang a melancholy loner aching for a male descendent to learn his rare and dying art.

China, the 1990s. A young bookseller is in love with a woman. The woman is now with another guy, a rich man. The rich man sends his people to beat the bookseller. In the fight, the laptop computer from a man looking at the scene gets broken. Who will pay for the computer? The bookseller wants revenge. Will it be useful? The bookseller and the laptop owner are from different ages and classes. They are two different points of view, two different Chinas. How will they fight for justice?

Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved and whom he has never been able to forget.

