Gu You / China / 2026 / 135min / Competition 

Gu You’s The First Taste of Loneliness, originally titled A Moon for Every River, is a quiet, exquisitely poetic film about loss, loneliness and the possibility of healing. It opens with the death of a father, then crosses the Qiantang River to an old apartment where three generations of women - grandmother, mother and daughter - must confront the absence of the same man: husband, father and grandfather. Remarkably, the film’s second scene unfolds in a single take lasting more than twenty minutes. The camera patiently explores the apartment he has left behind, observing objects, rooms and traces of everyday life. Rather than dramatizing grief, Gu allows memory to emerge from these ordinary spaces, as if the house itself were slowly remembering. The three women - Luna, Jiang Yue and Moon - share names associated with the moon, recalling the father’s recurring words: “A moon for every river.” Each woman, like a river, carries her own solitude, illuminated by a different memory of the man who has gone. The film moves at an unhurried pace, allowing emotions to surface almost imperceptibly. It is a deeply feminine work, portraying loneliness at three different stages of womanhood: adolescence, middle age and old age. Zhou Xun, in particular, gives a beautifully restrained performance as a single mother trying to find a way forward after loss. Her return to an intimate art-house film is one of the film’s quiet pleasures. The cinematography and music are equally essential. Gu’s graceful long takes extend the visual language of Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains and Dwelling by the West Lake, completing his landscape trilogy. The sentimental songs deepen the film’s melancholic atmosphere, culminating in Teresa Teng’s “The First Taste of Loneliness,” whose melancholy melody seems to float over the final images. Like a Chinese scroll slowly unfurling, Gu’s film asks us not to rush through life, but to contemplate what remains after someone is gone. In every river of loneliness, perhaps there is still a moon