Meiyun (Zhilei Xin) runs her own clothing brand in a slick shopping mall, where she broadcasts live walkthroughs of her latest products to fussy customers, who complain about issues beyond her control. Almost as curt are the doctors at the local hospital: Meiyun is six weeks pregnant but, with no hearable heartbeat, it\u2019s unclear whether the child will carry. Her gynecologist shows a striking disinterest in Meiyun\u2019s hope that it will come through; even in stoic China, the dispassion is breathtaking, the first sign of a harsh, unfeeling environment to which Meiyun is well-acquainted. The father of the child is Qifeng (Shaofeng Feng), a handsome married man whose own daughter seems to suspect something is off. Qifeng leaves much to be desired, apologizing to Meiyun for pressing her to get an abortion last time she fell pregnant. Meiyun confides, \u201cThe past will catch up with me. I will get what I deserve.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It soon becomes clear what she means. Qifeng is Mr. Right compared to Baoshu (Songwen Zhang, in the best performance of the movie). Now a cancer patient in a room close to where Meiyun is being consulted, he is an older man from Meiyun\u2019s past, long before the mall and the livestreams and the trimmings of an honest life. Baoshu spent time in prison for a car accident prosecuted as a hit-and-run. But Baoshu was asleep in the backseat and Meiyun was behind the wheel. <\/p>\n Baoshu\u2019s decision to take the blame and spend five years behind bars \u2014 not even telling his late mom the truth \u2014 continues to haunt both of them and causes an inescapable cycle of guilt. Meiyun briefly continues seeing Qifeng, setting up a love triangle that\u2019s like a cursed Chinese interpretation of \u201cMaterialists.\u201d The two men\u2019s culture clash is funnier than you might expect and credit to a filmmaker who grasps the tone of what might otherwise have been a dour experience.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t fun for long. Baoshu exploits Meiyun\u2019s admittedly well-placed guilt, moving into her place and behaving like a pig (and worse). Meiyun is now forced to confront the shame she was able to disregard while Baoshu was locked up and out of her life. It sends her into a spiral that sets up an arresting second half of the film<\/a>, which is part soap opera, part thriller.<\/p>\n The one constant is the unhappy couple\u2019s bleak surroundings. Shangjun\u2019s China is a grim setting. It\u2019s humid and gray, petty crime and exploitation abound, and even the hospital could really use a sweep. This is not the 21st-century China that the state is keen to project in films that play abroad \u2014 and these characters are not model 21st-century Chinese, either. The decision to allow its production and release (thus far anyway) is presumably the same rationale that saw Khrushchev allow Solzhenitsyn\u2019s \u201cOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,\u201d another story about unjust imprisonment and the burden of guilt, to be published at the height of censorship in 1962. Though it paints a dark picture of Stalin\u2019s Gulags, Solzhenitsyn\u2019s landmark autobiographical story is really about the freedoms Ivan can find within his prison camp over one \u201calmost happy\u201d day. The same applies to Shangjun\u2019s characters, whose unhappiness is primarily caused by their moral mistakes. True freedom, it suggests, is there to take it, if you can only break the cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Easier said than done. \u201cThe Sun Rises On Us All<\/a>\u201d soon becomes the disheartening but affecting story of a pair of broken people for whom salvation is simply unaffordable in a morally expensive world. Meiyun tells Baoshu he might as well stay at her place because \u201cLife is hard everywhere\u201d, a fairly concise expression of the existential nihilism to which they\u2019ve both fallen. The alternative \u2014 the unknown \u2014 is more frightening still. So they must remain boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Westerners have long indulged in the idea that it\u2019s Catholics and Jews who suffer the most guilt. With his latest, Cai Shangjun says: try me.<\/p>\n Grade: B-<\/p>\n \u201cThe Sun Rises on Us All\u201d premiered at the 2025 Venice<\/a> Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freud thought that, at least for some of us, the guilt comes before the crime. Seeking punishment for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,11337,2695,206,900,84844,15741],"class_list":["post-135088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-the-sun-rises-on-us-all","tag-venice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/P10YKA4.jpg\")
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