How come a wedding become an irremediable farce? Why does a couple need to exert great effort to get married? What makes their visit to the fiancé’s hometown a nightmare experience? Centering around the preparations for a grand ceremony, Best Director presents a panorama of conflicts between different generations, the liberal ideology and the conservative thinking, and the Northerner and the Southerner of China.

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The fictional story originates from the director Zhang Xian’s personal experience. Shooting the film in gauzy black-and-white, he interweaves the various dramas of his characters in a hilarious and dreamy way. The elderly with superstitious beliefs, the obsequious countrymen, the hypocritical old-time classmates and lover, not only exist in the film, but are ubiquitous in Chinese worldly reality.

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As a debut feature, Best Director succeeds in making an incisive commentary on everyone’s failure in adjusting to the overly rapid transition that happens in today’s China.