ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2018 Post-Production Fund

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Synopsis

A young city girl named Jingjing was looking for her boyfriend Yiming who disappeared, in his hometown. Instead she found Yiming’s grandparents, Shuimu and Ah-Fang, stuck in a remote village. Jingjing decided to stay to wait for Yiming to show up. Gradually she found that Shuimu had a secret friend called Zhongsheng who was mute and lost his childhood memories. Zhongsheng had a feeling that he would be gone soon and asked Shuimu to prepare some funeral supplies for him. He resided at the mountain as a reservoir keeper with no family. He was afraid that he would become a lost ghost “down there”. Traveling with Jingjing to find Zhongsheng’s true identity and hometown, Shuimu becomes immersed in the memories of their boyhood and 60-year-old relationship.

Director's Note

This is a story that is full of emotions in a land filled with drizzling and foggy rain during spring in South China. People here has restless but restraining emotions. They are humble with pains but also have unknown blessings. The present and the past are merged and full of ambiguity in this film. The dislocation will bring humor, but also a sense of mismatch. I am very interested in the romantic stories of the people from Canton area. Living in this subtropical monsoon climate region, people are always anxious while restrained. Their emotions surge within their bodies like underground lava. Time and space will be a unique component in this film. In the journey, time will twist ? the elderly Shuimu and Zhongsheng will meet themselves in youth. This is an interesting distortion ? it not only brings humor, but also a sense of distance and awkwardness. It makes the audience ponder about what happened in the past decades that changed these vigorous young men into two lifeless creatures.

Festivals

2018 Busan International Film Festival - A Window on Asian Cinema

Still Cut

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