Silver Lion winner Cai Shangjun is back at the Venice Film Festival with competition title “ The Sun Rises on Us All ,” a restrained drama about guilt, complicity and the elusive possibility of forgiveness.

The film stars Xin Zhilei (“Blossoms Shanghai”) as Meiyun, whose life is upended when she encounters Zhang Songwen (“The Pioneer”) as Baoshu, the former lover who once went to prison for a crime she committed. Feng Shaofeng (“Wolf Totem”) co-stars as Qifeng.

Cai, who won Venice’s best director prize in 2011 for “People Mountain People Sea,” describes a filmmaking journey interrupted by the pandemic. “In 2017 I made a film called ‘The Conformist,’” he tells Variety . “After that film, I was involved in preparing for a new film. After 2019 the pandemic hit, and the climate for m

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