Director in Person (Wushan Yunyu). Zhang Ming's remarkable debut feature is the first film from China's studio system which bears comparison with recent "illegal" independent movies. Set in a small town on the Yangtze which will disappear under water when the Three Gorges Dam is built, the storyline traces three disparate but intersecting lives: three people (all currently single, but two expecting to marry soon) looking forward to changes for the better. Mai Qiang staffs a station on the river, raising and lowering signals; (widow) Chen Qing works the front desk of a seedy hotel; and the young cop Wu Gang thinks about nothing but his imminent wedding-until he has to deal with an allegation that Mai has raped Chen. Zhang's storytelling is deliberately oblique, often to amusingly Pinteresque effect, but his feeling for his unfulfilled characters is precise and very engaging. And his eye for Chinese sexual attitudes and behaviors is spot-on. Rainclouds over Wushan is ultimately as much about dreams as it is about unsatisfactory lives.-Tony Rayns, Vancouver Int'l Film Festival