Old Stone
- -A man falls down the stairs, but instead of helping him, the bystanders just take photos with their phones. Lao Shi is a taxi driver and he’s fighting for justice in the darkest recesses of Chinese society. The man who pushed him got into his taxi drunk not so very long ago, grabbed the steering wheel and caused an accident. The victim of the crash has been in a coma ever since, and because his family is destitute, Lao Shi is paying the hospital bills. The insurance company is refusing to cover the costs because the taxi driver left the scene of the accident with the injured man because no help was in sight. Now Lao Shi needs the testimony of his passenger, who angrily refuses to cooperate.
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A hard-working cab driver in a bustling Chinese metropolis is plunged into a bureaucratic nightmare when he takes an injured man to the hospital.
Directed by Johnny Ma
Original title: Lao shi
Origin: Canada / China
Time: 80 minutes
Year: 2016
Language: Mandarin
Cast: Chen Gang, Nai An, Wang Hongwei, Zhang Zebin, Luo Xue’er
Cinematographer: Leung Ming-Kai
Presented at Toronto Film Festival 2016
Old Stone trailer
Johnny Ma’s thrilling feature debut takes us on an unnerving trip through China’s social strata and their corresponding levels of “justice,” telling the tale of a man whose honest act is turned against him.
For Lao Shi (Chen Gang), a taxi driver in a crowded city, every day of work is a fight for his family’s basic economic survival. One day, swerving his car because his arm is grabbed by a drunken passenger, he accidentally hits a motorcyclist. Passersby observe and take photos but don’t intervene, and when the ambulance takes too long to arrive, he decides to take the injured man to the hospital himself. But upon their arrival at the hospital, a bureaucratic nightmare quickly begins to unfold. [Source]