There is no image as directly strange and elating in Jia Zhangke’s 24 City as the apartment-building rocket ship from his 2006 feature, Still Life. This is a more subtle and insinuating piece of work, one whose effectiveness hinges on advance knowledge that it is an intentional blend of fiction and documentary.

Set in Sichuan’s capital city of Chengdu, the film takes its title from the luxury residence complex being built over and around a former munitions plant (Factory 420). Jia alternates between languorous shots of the factory in its final days and extended talking-head interviews with former workers and their families, though it’s never acknowledged in the movie proper that three of these accounts are invented monologues performed by actresses.

Jia is one of the guiding lights of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers, and 24 City is a potent exploration of his constant theme – the tectonic shifts that occur as the old gives way to the new. This sense of near-apocalyptic physical movement is as apparent in the billowing dust cloud of a demolished Factory 420 structure as it is in the meta-reminiscence of Gu Minhua (Joan Chen), who recalls how her co-workers would often liken her to the heroine of the Cultural Revolution classic, The Little Flower.

Keith Uhlich

From Time Out New York

Dir Jia Zhangke, 112 mins, opens Thursday 2