Dreamy, austere, and full of rustic beauty, Deming Chen’s stunning debut presents Youbin Gong, an adolescent boy living in Sangzhi County. Chen’s primary aim is to document Gong’s coming of age, but his perspective is wide enough to include the youth’s one-armed father and wizened, lively grandparents. These folks make for rich human portraiture, and Chen depicts them and their struggles with patience and grace. The director timestamps his narrative with excerpts of government radio broadcasts discussing improvements in the “New China”, dividing his material by alternating the dimensions of the frame and switching between colour and monochrome.
Chen’s eye for beauty is terrific, and the film’s most striking element is the visual treatment of Gong’s lush natural surroundings. Punctuating the flow of life are short, limpid poems: their text appears at transitional moments, imbuing the film with a contemplative air. Always is a metaphysical work in which each moment of beauty is weighted with a hint of things beyond our power of sight.
DOX:AWARD, CPH:DOX 2025
Presented by
Supported by
Community Partner
Youbin Gong
USA/France/Taiwan/China
2025
In Hunanese with English subtitles
Animal cruelty; gender or sexual discrimination
At VIFF Centre
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Gugi Gumilang
Producer
Hansen Lin
Cinematography
Deming Chen
Editor
Ichu Lin
Original Music
Yannick Dauby, Yueran Kan
Deming Chen 陈德明
Deming Chen is an emerging director and cinematographer based in Beijing, China, who studied at the Li Xianting Film School. His works are marked by a restrained yet expressive visual style, and explore themes of personal emotions and identities shaped by broad social and historical forces.
Filmography: Song of Shiratori (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Köln 75
The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.
Nollywood: Filmbusiness African Style
If you've wondered how one of the world's highest-producing film industries sustains itself, this documentary breaks down the inner workings of Nigeria's most lucrative creative economy, the second largest film industry in the world according to UNESCO.
Frankenstein
Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro might have been made for each other. The movie does not disappoint, a ripping yarn of grand adventure, spectacle, hubris, passion and XXL body parts, a tale of the fantastic that rings the imagination. Screening in 35mm.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
