Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures Acquires Apichatpong's 'Jenjira's Magnificent Dream' for China

Unknown Pleasures Pictures, the Chinese art-house distributor co-founded by filmmaker Jia Zhangke, has acquired China rights to Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Jenjira's Magnificent Dream." Co-founder Tian Qi confirmed the deal to Variety.

The label is also negotiating to acquire two titles from this year's Cannes Film Festival. The Apichatpong pickup extends an accelerating acquisition streak: in June, Unknown Pleasures added Andrey Zvyagintsev's "Minotaur" and Marine Atlan's "La Gradiva," and in January it took Greater China rights to Rafael Manuel's Sundance title "Filipiñana." Jia executive produced that film, which had its Asian premiere at the Pingyao International Film Festival this week.

The company takes its name from Jia's 2002 feature "Unknown Pleasures." Jia runs the label with Tian, who also founded Hero Films, the distributor of Gu You's Busan title "The First Taste of Loneliness." The outfit focuses on niche international art films and, alongside festival titles, hunts for hidden gems that lack strong international sales backing.

The model has precedent. Before Unknown Pleasures launched, Tian's previous company released Weerasethakul's "Memoria" in China, where it grossed $360,000 — a third of the film's total box office. Jia and Tian say that early success gave them confidence.

Unknown Pleasures launched in 2025 with Italian director Paola Cortellesi's "There's Still Tomorrow," one of Italy's biggest box office hits of 2023. The company acquired the film in 2024, screened it at the Pingyao International Film Festival and opened it in Chinese cinemas on March 8, timed to International Women's Day. Strong reviews carried it to a $6 million gross.

Later that year, the company picked up four Cannes titles: Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value," Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent," Fukada Koji's "Love on Trial" and the restoration of Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush."

Tian frames the company's ambition in demographic terms. "The founding ethos was that the world is full of wondrous movies, and among the 1.4 billion Chinese population, these films are bound to find their audience," he says. Not every acquisition has to turn a profit, he adds. "Once we acquire a title, we definitely aim to release it with the fastest speed."

Jia says he and Tian agree on keeping the company's finances stable, but the main mission remains "to distribute films we truly like. If we stand purely from a business point, we wouldn't start this business anyways."

He wants Unknown Pleasures to help grow China's art-film market, and he is planning on a horizon longer than any single release. "We operate with a long-term library strategy: these titles should remain evergreen in the coming years. By building our own catalog and taking a long-term financial view, we keep the revenue sustainable," Jia says.

His curatorial instincts are blunt. Movies "that are genuinely interesting, deserve to be shared, and people might easily pass over — those are the ones that really need to be seen in a cinema," he says.

He is candid about what gets lost when such work migrates to streaming platforms. "We can't help but sigh over some films that were released online — they actually belong to cinema," he says.

With the Apichatpong deal secured, two Cannes acquisitions in negotiation and a growing library strategy, Unknown Pleasures is positioning itself as China's most committed pipeline for international auteur cinema — and betting that a billion-plus potential viewers will keep answering.