Spring Quartet: Screening of The Crossing (2018)
When: Sunday, May 17, 2026, 7:30 PM - 9:10 PM
Where: BLOC Cinema, ArtsOne, Mile End
A rare London screening of The Crossing — Bai Xue’s acclaimed coming-of-age portrait of youth, borders, and desire.
Part of Green Ray’s “Spring Quartet” programme, this special London screening of The Crossing brings Bai Xue’s acclaimed debut feature back to the big screen in a rare theatrical presentation. Premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the New Generation section’s top prize, the film has since emerged as one of the defining Chinese coming-of-age works of recent years.
Set between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, The Crossing follows teenage girl Peipei, who moves daily across the border yet feels she belongs fully to neither city. Hoping to save enough money to see snow in Hokkaido, she becomes entangled in an underground smuggling network transporting iPhones across customs checkpoints. What begins as an adolescent desire for freedom gradually unfolds into a tense portrait of identity, precarity, friendship, and moral ambiguity in contemporary China.
Blending the energy of urban thriller cinema with the emotional sensitivity of youth drama, Bai Xue captures the restless emotional landscape of a generation growing up amid borders — geographic, social, and psychological. Through neon-lit streets, crowded checkpoints, and moments of quiet vulnerability, the film explores what it means to come of age while constantly existing in transit.
This screening is presented as part of Spring Quartet, a curated programme exploring four different cinematic interpretations of “spring” across contemporary Chinese-language cinema — from youthful turbulence and emotional awakening to migration, memory, and renewal.
The event will also feature an online post-screening Q&A (subject to final confirmation) with director Bai Xue, offering audiences the opportunity to engage directly with one of the most exciting emerging voices in contemporary Chinese cinema.