Chinese director calls Crosscurrent 'love poem' for Yangtze

Director Yang Chao says his film Chang Jiang Tu (Crosscurrent), shown in competition on Monday at the Berlin International Film Festival, is like a love poem for one of the most important rivers in China - and also one of its most damaged.

The film blends elements of the real and the surreal as it follows a quest by the young captain Gao Chun, played by Qin Hao, as he steers his decrepit hulk of a freighter up the 6,300-kilometer river to deliver a mysterious cargo.

He is also in pursuit of a beautiful young woman, An Lu (Xin Zhilei), who may or may not be a phantasm, and who appears at various places along the river, sometimes to make love to him, at other times to vanish from sight.