A Hong Kong writer finds inspiration from the women he’s encountered in his past in this futuristic story of love and memory from Wong Kar-wai, who continues the story he began in his acclaimed masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2000). 

Remembering back to the early 1960s, when he lived in the Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong, Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) writes an erotic story that begins with him meeting a mysterious woman on Christmas Eve who lived in room 2046. Chow moves into room 2047 and eventually, on the next Christmas Eve, begins an affair with a beautiful sex worker who now rents the mysterious woman’s room. As he writes his story, which he sets in the future year 2046, Chow tells of a place where people travel to recapture lost memories; he is the first one to return.  

2046’s dazzling fantasy sequences give Wong and two of his key collaborators—cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor/costume designer/production designer William Chang Suk Ping—license to let their imaginations run wild, propelling the sumptuous visuals and operatic emotions skyward toward the sublime. The film also stars Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha) and Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love, Irma Vep). 

This screening will be preceded by an introduction from local filmmaker & critic, Michael Glover Smith (Relative, Rendezvous in Chicago).