Once upon a time, far into the future, “dreamers” are no longer allowed. These dreamers, called “deliriants,” are people with a tendency to fantasize, dream, imagine, or lose themselves in the magic of movies. It is a world where people have stopped dreaming in order to become immortal. Oddly enough, who would want to live forever in a bleak, boring, cruel world? I don’t know.

So, in the world of Bi Gan’s Resurrection, winner of the 2025 Cannes Special Jury Prize, dreaming is banned and dreamers are hunted down by “seekers.” Still, some continue to engage in this “illegal” act — among them a nameless male deliriant (Jackson Yee), who is hunted down by a female seeker (Shu Qui).

The story follows the female seeker who captures the male dreamer. Driven by curiosity, she jams a film projector into his body to access and watch his subconscious. Like Alice (in Wonderland) tumbling down the rabbit hole, the audience, along with the seeker, is pulled into the deliriant’s dreams, which are fragmented into five chapters.

These chapters trace the evolution of cinema across a century, each unfolding as its own sensory experience. In every segment, the deliriant is resurrected as a different character, and the worlds he inhabits are breathtakingly surreal: baroque, visually dense, and rich with theatrical excess. If Jafar Panahi’s cinema is minimalist, this film is expansive and playful, though never self-indulgent.

Each chapter adopts a distinct cinematic language, but two moments stand out for their sheer beauty: the snowy Buddhist temple chapter, and the final story set on the eve of Y2K.

Recurring visual motifs run through every chapter of this breathtaking arthouse film — knives, water, boxes, blood, trains, and the meeting of two strangers. And rather than being plot-driven, the film operates on mood and atmosphere.

The environments feel tactile: you can almost smell the damp alleyways, feel water dripping, the cold of snow, heartbreak, fear, despair. Yet the film is not without humor, as in one scene when a discarded, rotten tooth returns as a human being (LOL!).

A melancholy undercurrent runs throughout the film, but Bi invites us to linger in this reverie, ultimately leaving us with a deep gratitude for the existence of cinema itself.

Resurrection is haunting and visually striking. Its nearly three-hour runtime is immersive, and a feast for the senses.

4 out of 5 stars

Last day (3 February) to catch this in select Philippine cinemas.