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RAI FILM Festival takes place on 27-30 March 2025. Learn more.

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2021

The Two Lives of Li Ermao

Directed by Jia Yuchuan

2019 – 87'

Synopsis

Filmed over 17 years across Southern China, this remarkable film is an intimate and heart-wrenching portrait of Li Ermao, a transgender migrant worker, who performs in clubs looking for love and acceptance. Living as a “ladyboy” with a string of boyfriends, she faces repeated encounters of prejudice and aggression with equal measures of resilience and vulnerability. With a flair for the dramatic and her budding career as a popstar, Ermao’s story takes many dramatic twists and surprising turns as she moves between the urban and the rural, searching for identity and fighting for a better life.

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RAI FILM Festival 2025

The next RAI FILM Festival will take place in person from 27-30 March 2025 at the Watershed Cinema and the Arnolfini International Centre for Contemporary Arts in Bristol (UK) and online throughout the month of April 2025.