Blind Mountain

Aroview: A superbly executed kidnapping drama that’s also surprisingly achieved given its critical portrait of Chinese society, this concerns the heinous rural practice of abducting young women and forcing them to be the wives of men in remote provinces.

Centred on a career-aspiring woman conned into visiting a mountain village, then drugged and sold to an unseemly farmer, the film successfully balances sobering dramatic insights into the plight of the kidnapped and the naivety of her surroundings, with an almost unbearable, simmering tension built around her resilience and will to escape.

NZ International Film Festival 2008