Dead Pigs

DVD Features

Limitation of Life
Directed by Renkai Tan
United States / China
English and Chinese with English subtitles
13 minutes

This beautiful homage to lush 1950s melodramas subverts the genre by focusing on a family of Chinese immigrants, who at that time had been rendered voiceless by Hollywood.

Sound: 2.0 stereo & 5.1 surround

Discs: 1

• Highest Rating
  "Equally darkly funny, strange and enthralling, Dead Pigs announces Cathy Yan as a director worthy of our attention."
  Courtney Small, Cinema Axis
• Highest Rating
  "Thoroughly enjoyable, "Dead Pigs" arises as the origin chapter of a great storyteller and an opportune mosaic of people in a rapidly transforming superpower."
  Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times
• Highest Rating
  "A bold social satire that never loses its sense of fun, Dead Pigs finally lets us confirm what Birds Of Prey already suggested: Cathy Yan has a sharp eye and a fearless voice - we're lucky to have her."
  Ella Kemp, Empire Magazine
• Highest Rating
  "Cathy Yan's delightful, spiky, comic debut...an antidote to China’s weightier arthouse output, settling the stomach after too much stolid social realism, effervescent as an alka-seltzer."
  Jessica Kiang, Variety
• Highest Rating
  "Cathy Yan’s first feature is a dark, quirky comedy that peels back the layers of contemporary Mainland mores and reveals a group of people almost completely deracinated by their quest to get ahead in a society buffeted by rapidly shifting cultural expectations. Genially offbeat and broadly relatable...."
  Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter
• Highest Rating
  "Demonstrating a light touch — underscored by a whimsy-leaning score and overtly comic moments, but never delving into flimsiness or farce — Yan handles her chosen topic, and the tapestry of tales it’s woven through, with care. "
  Sarah Ward, Screen Daily
• Highest Rating
  "Dead Pigs is a stylish and irreverent social satire about greed, progress and the loss of values in Asia’s behemoth."
  Rob Aldam, Backseat Mafia
• Highest Rating
  "It's a film that keeps on peeling back layers and which ultimately feels rather touching in its unstereotypical view of humanity. Here, no-one is what they initially seem and there is hope for them all."
  Emma Simmonds, The List
• Highest Rating
  "Dead Pigs is Cathy Yan’s first feature, but its remarkable acuity marks the debut of a formidable filmmaker. Evoking the warm, chaotic spirit of early Zhang Yimou works like The Story of Qiu Ju, Yan’s film follows the intertwined stories of four Shanghai natives and one Western expat as dead pigs suddenly appear floating on the Yangtze River. "
  John Lopez, Departures
• Highest Rating
  "A unique and idiosyncratic work which served to put an exciting filmmaker firmly on the map."
  Tom Beasley, Flickering Myth
• Highest Rating
  "A work of ebullient satire and quietly stirring humanism, as well as a trenchant study of China’s frenetic modernization as a horror show in progress, one that’s every bit the equal of America’s own late-capitalist nightmare."
  Isaac Feldberg, The Playlist
• Highest Rating
  "Dead Pigs's intermingling of grit and polish is hugely satisfying: a potent combination of pearls and swine."
  Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph
• Highest Rating
  "Dead Pigs is a charming, quirky, and unique directorial debut from Cathy Yan and is another sign of her promising future in cinema."
  Lewis Knight, Daily Mirror