A relationship from which neither party can quite break free, no matter how far apart they drift—perhaps this is another meaning of family. When Vee Shi returned to China and the hometown he left as a child, with a camera in hand, he is confronted with this notion. He found that caring for his father, who had been felled by a stroke, was weighing heavily on the daily lives of his longsuffering mother and his sister Liyun, who shouldered the burden of earning a living and raising her children on her own. In a reality where someone once sent away from the family under the one-child policy has ended up shouldering the burden of supporting the family, the home is depicted as a place where the desire to leave and an inescapable sense of responsibility become tangled together. Originally conceived as a fiction film in which the director and his family would play themselves, the film gradually takes on the form of a documentary as it follows the course of real life. Leaving cannot bring the relationship to an end, nor can staying fill the void; only time flows inexorably on through the rift between them.
Born in Fuqing, China, in 1989 and currently based in Australia, Shi's work has won Screen Producers Australia, Australian Directors' Guild, and Australian Writers' Guild awards.
From Tokyo International Film Festival 2026, No. 39
