Long characterized by romanticized images of gangsters, politicians, and revolutionaries, Shanghai has experienced a fantastically tumultuous history. “Like an orphan anxious to learn the truth about where he comes from, I felt an urgency to learn just what lies behind the familiar official historical narratives,” said the director Jia Zhang-ke (Platform; Still Life), “one of the most important filmmakers in the world today” (NPR). The result of Jia's inquiry, I Wish I Knew, is an expansive survey of Shanghai's history as told by its citizens, filmmakers, and artists, including notable film figures Hou Hsiao-hsien (The Flowers of Shanghai), actress Wei Wei (Spring in a Small Town), and Wang Tung (Red Persimmon). Jia's use of archival footage in tandem with these testimonies further illuminates how civil war, government crackdowns, and exile dictated stories of love, family, and career. Many of Jia's interviewees are, in fact, exiles, anticommunists, criminals, intellectuals, and other black sheep who lend this history a particularly flavorful, unlicensed air.