About the Director/Screenwriter
Buwan Shima: selected works include Summer Memories, The Great Heist Gang and Genius Mahjong Mom.
Wangeliangzi Is a Mountain
Creative Statement
This is a film about searching for "identity". It comes from my attachment to my family, my sense of the land where I grew up and of Yi culture, and a question that has stayed with me all my life: "Who am I?" For me, this film is about a broken identity, and the sense of displacement a person feels after leaving home for many years, wherever you come from. You gradually lose touch with your roots, and it is the roots that give the whole tree its meaning and energy. This is what I call the state of "bardo" (emptiness). I know this feeling well, so I put very personal emotional experience into the film, in order to capture the theme Jiang Yi goes through, which I see as quite universal. I believe these subtle inner layers can be shown clearly. Ultimately, what we are exploring here is this connection to one's roots: can it be traced? And how should "roots" in the true sense be defined? For Jiang Yi, it is a question of the courage to seek the truth and of whether the truth matters. At a time when "the search for personal identity and feminism" are current issues, I hope to project this real experience into a larger social context, and to make a film with a clear genre that also has something to offer artistically.
Synopsis
Jiang Yi, a Yi woman living in the city, brings her critically ill adoptive mother to hospital for treatment. The arrival of a large crowd of Yi relatives and friends sets off a series of tragicomic events, and also stirs Jiang Yi's longing to know where she came from. Finally, close to the truth, she makes her own choice...
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Running Time:
90 min -
Genre:
Family, Women, Ethnic
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Director/Screenwriter:
Buwan Shima -
Producer:
Teng Jingshu
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Production Company:
Shanghai Jingshu Culture Media Co., Ltd. | Beijing Chumen Guanghua Culture Media Co., Ltd.
About the Producer
Teng Jingshu: producer, film critic and founder of Jingshu Culture; council member of the Theory and Criticism Committee of the China Film Association, of the Shanghai Film Association and of the Shanghai Film Critics Society. He has led the development of several film and television projects. Selected works: the films Wild Grass, Soulmate, Rebirth from the Ashes and Orioles Singing in the Willows, and the documentary No Island Alone, among others. Selected works: Wild Grass, Soulmate, Orioles Singing in the Willows, etc.
About the Chief Planner
Gu Zheng: associate professor at the Central Academy of Drama. Selected works include Floating Life, People Mountain People Sea and The Conformist. He was story consultant and assistant director on Jia Zhangke's "Hometown Trilogy" (Xiao Wu, Platform and Unknown Pleasures), and literary consultant on Ning Hao's Mongolian Ping Pong. Other screenwriting credits include Floating Life, People Mountain People Sea and The Conformist; People Mountain People Sea, which he co-wrote, won the Silver Lion at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in 2011.
Logline
Jiang Yi, a Yi woman living in the city, brings her critically ill adoptive mother to hospital for treatment. The arrival of a large crowd of Yi relatives and friends sets off a series of tragicomic events, and also stirs Jiang Yi's longing to know where she came from. Finally, close to the truth, she makes her own choice......