25th New York Asian Film Festival

July 10-26, 2026

New York Premiere

Montreal, My Beautiful

Montréal, ma belle

It's been years since Feng Xia immigrated to Montreal, a city whose language still keeps her at the edge of things. Her life has been arranged around other people: a loveless marriage, two children and a family shop. Until she signs up for French class, and one small act of independence leads to another. Camille, younger, Québécoise, unafraid of wanting what she wants, enters her life like a door left open. Their secret affair draws Feng Xia into a summer of forbidden tenderness, while the marriage and family she has carefully held together begin to shift under her feet. Xiaodan He’s landmark queer drama gives Joan Chen one of her richest recent roles: a woman discovering, long after she thought the question was closed, that desire has not finished with her.

Director: Xiaodan He
Producers: Xiaodan He, Christine Falco
Screenwriter: Xiaodan He
Cast: Joan Chen, Charlotte Aubin, John Xu, Pei Yao Xu, Annette Garand
Languages: French, Mandarin Chinese with English Subtitles
2025; 117 min.; DCP
Country: Canada

SCHEDULE:

Sunday July 12, 3:00pm
Film at Lincoln Center

Intro and Q&A with actress Joan Chen

Tuesday July 14, 12:30pm
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

Joan Chen
陈冲

Joan Chen began her film career in Shanghai at fourteen. Her performance in Little Flower (1979) won her China’s Hundred Flowers Award for Best Actress and made her a star before she turned twenty. She left China for the United States in 1981 and has built a screen career spanning more than four decades, with roles in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990), Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007), and Jiang Wen’s The Sun Also Rises (2007). She has won Best Actress twice at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, for Red Rose, White Rose (1994) and The Home Song Stories (2007). Her performance in Sean Wang’s Dìdi, which premiered at Sundance in 2024 and won both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble, brought a new generation to her work. As a director, she debuted with Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998), which swept the Golden Horse Awards with seven wins, including Best Feature Film and Best Director, and followed it with Autumn in New York (2000), starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder. She has presided over the Golden Horse jury and served on international festival juries. NYAFF presents her with the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award at the Opening Weekend Gala and screens Montreal, My Beautiful.