Watch Black Ocean (2016) Official Trailer

Black Ocean by Liu Yujia portrays a desert landscape in a state of both destruction and construction, revealing the desert’s simultaneous fragility and indestructibility. The structure of the storytelling of this film was inspired by Italian writer Italo Calvino’s novel, Invisible Cities (1972). Several chapters from the book are interwoven in the film incorporating the discussions of cities and landscapes narrated by Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in the novel. Their debate provides a window through which the viewer may enter, wander, get lost, and find an exit, or do several of these at the same time.