Many Days Ahead

Creative Statement

In 2018 we came into contact with music therapy and with some elderly people at the end of life. After two documentary shoots and a long period of reflection and learning, this film grew out of what we came to understand. Real emotions from life are woven into the fiction film and linked with it, so that the emotions are amplified. We hope to give viewers a new emotional experience and more room for engagement.

Synopsis

[Drama] Every spring, Ma Leyao returns to her hometown of Chengdu. This year, besides celebrating her mother's birthday, she gives her grandmother's old home a simple renovation and visits her grandfather's elder brother. For five years, these routines are things Yaoyao has done every year. [Documentary] In the United States, Chinese music therapist Liu Xiaotian works every day with dying elderly people who have no more than six months to live, offering them psychological support. The film shows how elderly people at this stage are reluctant to leave their families and love them from the heart. [Drama] Five years earlier, in the last stage of his life, Yaoyao's grandfather Wang Zhongwen said goodbye to his family in his own way, engraving his love in their memories. Elderly people in different countries, the same feelings. The real and the fictional reflect each other, showing warm moments in life.

Genre:

Drama, Realist

Director:

Guo Ke

Screenwriter:

Peng Yi | Guo Ke

Producer:

Huang Qi

Production Company:

Sichuan Guangying Shenchu Culture Communication Co., Ltd.

Executive Producer:

Zhang Xinyi

About the Director

Guo Ke: entered the industry in 1998 working on a TV series, and has since worked as assistant director on more than 50 feature films. Made the documentaries Thirty Two (2012), Twenty Two (2014) and Xiaotian (2018 and 2019).

About the Screenwriter

Peng Yi: TV series including The Weight of Justice and The Never-Fading Homeland. Guo Ke: entered the industry in 1998 working on a TV series, and has since worked as assistant director on more than 50 feature films. Made the documentaries Thirty Two (2012), Twenty Two (2014) and Xiaotian (2018 and 2019).

About the Producer

Huang Qi: co-producer of the China-US co-production The Lone Star; executive producer of the films Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? and Love You Forever, and of Bleeding Steel, produced by and starring Jackie Chan. Extensive experience of shooting overseas.

About the Production Company

Sichuan Guangying Shenchu Culture Communication Co., Ltd.: presented Thirty Two (Douban 9.5) and Twenty Two (Douban 8.7). Twenty Two received a Special Award of the Five-One Project from the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Publicity Department of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee. It became the first Chinese documentary to gross over 100 million yuan, the highest-grossing documentary worldwide in 2017 and the highest-rated documentary of 2017, and was released in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong (China), Germany, South Korea and other countries and regions.

About the Executive Producer

Zhang Xinyi: starred in An Inaccurate Memoir and Beijing Love Story; directed Miss Puff; funded Twenty Two; co-presented Long Day's Journey into Night.

Logline

In his eighties, a grandfather enters the final stage of an illness, but he never stops caring for his family. Years after his death, his love still surrounds them and has never faded.