General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

All Ears

All Ears (不虚此行; also known by its original title 倾听, "Listening") is a 2023 Chinese drama film written and directed by Liu Jiayin (刘伽茵) and starring Hu Ge as Wen Shan, a struggling screenwriter in Beijing who begins making a living writing eulogies for the dead. It premiered at the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival on 10 June 2023, where it won the Golden Goblet Award for Best Director and Best Actor, and was released in mainland China on 9 September 2023.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Liu Jiayin (刘伽茵), her first feature made under conventional production after more than a decade away from filmmaking¹^•³
Cast	Hu Ge, Wu Lei, Qi Xi, Narenhua, Gan Yunchen, with Bai Ke in a special appearance²^•⁴
Release	Premiered 10 June 2023 at the Shanghai International Film Festival; mainland China release 9 September 2023; Hong Kong release 8 November 2023¹^•⁵
Runtime	119 minutes (listed as 118 minutes by some Chinese databases)¹^•⁶
Awards	Golden Goblet Award for Best Director (Liu Jiayin) and Best Actor (Hu Ge) at the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival; nominated for Best Film¹
Box office	27.406 million RMB total in mainland China (Maoyan data), ranking 115th among 2023 releases⁴^•⁷
Audience rating	7.0/10 on Douban from 64,662 user ratings¹

Spoilers

Plot

Wen Shan (闻善), played by Hu Ge, is a screenwriter who has never completed a script and struggles to make a living in Beijing. Through a friend who works at a funeral home, he falls by chance into writing eulogies. When meeting the loved ones of those who have died, he watches them closely, hears their accounts, and begins writing; while helping to reconstruct other people's lives, he establishes a place for himself in the city and comes to realize that ordinary people, too, can occupy the spotlight.²^•⁸

The film links five stories of the deceased through Wen Shan's interviews. They include a lonely father whose busy son neglected him while a young grandson understood him best; an eldest brother who cared for the Wan siblings; a startup founder who worked himself to death just as he was about to move out of his basement office; a lawyer with severe depression who loved voice acting, whose suicide is gradually explained through the memories of an online friend, Shao Jinsui (Qi Xi), who travels from Gansu to Beijing; and Aunt Fang (Narenhua), who booked her own eulogy and funeral after a cancer diagnosis and became an optimistic celebrity in her community of cancer patients.⁹^•⁴

Apart from Aunt Fang, the four other deceased exist only in the accounts of relatives and friends, some without even a clear portrait photo; their figures are assembled from Wen Shan's questioning and the memories of the living.⁹ A second thread follows Wen Shan's inner life through Xiao Yin (Wu Lei), a character who appears around his apartment and is eventually revealed to be the unfinished protagonist of the script Wen Shan cannot complete, a mirror with whom he converses.¹⁰^•⁹

The director's return

Liu Jiayin first drew international attention with two independent films made with her parents, Oxhide (2005) and Oxhide II (2009); Oxhide won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Caligari Film Award at the Berlinale, and Oxhide II was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes.¹¹^•¹² All Ears came after a hiatus of roughly fourteen years from directing and was her first feature completed within a conventional production system, produced under Cao Baoping, who encouraged her to keep creating and shepherded the project.³^•¹³ The film was officially announced and began shooting on 18 March 2022.¹⁴

At the press conference after its Shanghai premiere, Liu Jiayin described the film as "a summary of my own dozen-plus years of not creating," and said the story reflected her long effort to balance the relationship between herself and the world.¹¹^•¹⁵ She has said that death was neither the starting point nor the destination of the story but a path Wen Shan walks, and that the film's concern is his experience and gradual awakening rather than the funeral industry itself.¹⁶

Title and style

The film's original Chinese title was 倾听 ("Listening"), and the English title All Ears carries the same idea. Liu Jiayin has described listening as an act of total attention in which the other person's words pass through one's body and mind; in the film, Wen Shan's listening gives each deceased person a story in which they can be the protagonist.¹⁷

Critics consistently describe the film's style as quiet and anti-dramatic. It has no strong dramatic conflict, and its plot threads are loosely gathered only by their connection to Wen Shan.¹⁸ Reviewers noted its plain texture, traditional screen ratio, restrained use of dialect and background music, and frequent use of silence in place of emotional scoring.¹⁷^•¹⁰ One commentator placed it in the lineage of Departures rather than the more theatrical Lighting Up the Stars, calling its structure essayistic, with dramatic action hidden inside words and dialogue.⁹ A Wenhui Daily critic argued the film's slowness functions as a corrective to the short-video era, while also faulting its editing and some stilted dialogue.¹⁹

Reception and box office

The film won Best Director and Best Actor at the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Film there.¹ Commercially it underperformed relative to its cast: total mainland box office was 27.406 million RMB, ranking 115th among 2023 releases, and Hu Ge publicly acknowledged that although the film was not a particularly commercial work, the team still needed ticket sales.⁴^•⁷^•²⁰ On Douban it holds a 7.0 rating from 64,662 users, placing it above 77 percent of drama films on the site.¹

Critical opinion divided along predictable lines. Supporters praised its essay-like narrative and its attention to ordinary lives; the People's Daily overseas edition highlighted its unhurried, prose-like storytelling.²¹ Detractors questioned its realism, noting that the film never shows a single complete eulogy despite its eulogy-writing protagonist, and compared its reception unfavorably with Departures, which earned over 60 million RMB on its mainland re-release.⁸^•¹³ A year-end Xinhua survey of 2023 Chinese cinema grouped All Ears with films such as Umbilical Cord as examples of young filmmakers experimenting with cinematic language in ways distinct from commercial filmmaking.²²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2023 and 2024 › Titles A to G

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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