Through interviews with retired workers and faux interviews with scripted characters, Jia brings long-repressed history to life on an intimate scale.

24 City belies its documentary origins with overtly poetic film language: the film is an elegiac visual symphony of carefully framed compositions, trompe l'oeil camera movements, posed portraits, internal rhymes and mysterious vignettes.

A blend of documentary and drama which is by turns movingly authentic and deliberately artificial.

In 2008, Jia Zhang-ke was still in top form, as evident in “24 City”, particularly in the way he combines documentary with fiction while reinvigorating his own cinematic style.