CPH:DOX 2025 – The Dating Game

It’s not easy being a man in today’s China. At least not if you want a wife. The dating market is fiercely competitive and decades of one-child policy have not made it any easier. So the three bachelors Zhou, Li and Wu sign up for an intensive seven-day dating course with the popular coach Hao. And now it’s no longer enough to just be yourself. Image, status and finances are everything in the Chinese dating market, and then it’s just not good enough to be a 36-year-old working-class man earning $600 a month. With an army of other suitors chasing them, the three gentlemen have no choice but to listen to their coach. Hao teaches them dodgy pick-up lines, but could do with a piece of advice or two himself as his own marriage begins to fall apart. ‘The Dating Game’ is an entertaining, at time absurd and always heartfelt story about love and gender roles in modern China.