North American Premiere
Huo Meng’s film folds a grand historical reckoning into the story of one rural Chinese family. The year is 1991, and changes are coming for the Li clan: A new wave of modernization looms over their village, which has long sustained itself through wheat farming. Our protagonist is Chuang (Wang Sheng), a gifted young boy who loves his great-grandmother (Zhang Yanrong), aunt (Zheng Chuwen), and disabled cousin (Zhu Haotian). Promised advancement but faced with cruelty and prejudice, each generation of the Li family must reckon with the cost of reforming their traditional way of life.
As Living the Land progresses, its thematic reach expands and the film grows in dramatic force, inviting comparison with the works of Chinese masters Jia Zhangke and Tian Zhuangzhuang, as well as with John Ford’s historical family saga How Green Was My Valley. Visually rich, finely detailed, and large in ambition, this is a powerfully assertive work.
Silver Bear for Best Director, Berlinale 2025
Media Partner
Wang Shang, Zhang Yanrong, Zhang Chuwen
China
2025
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Animal cruelty
At International Village
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Xu Chunping, Yao Chen
Producer
Zhang Fan
Screenwriter
Huo Meng
Cinematography
Guo Daming
Editor
Huo Meng
Original Music
Wan Jianguo
Huo Meng
Huo Meng was born in 1984 in Taikang, Henan Province, China. Starting out as a law student at the Communication University of China, he later embarked on a master’s degree in cinema at the same institution. In 2018, he released his first fiction feature, Crossing the Border – Zhaoguan, which won the Pingyao International Film Festival Fei Mu Award for Best Director and the Fajr International Film Festival Best Asian Director award. The film also received a Best Director nomination at the Golden Rooster Film Festival.
Filmography: Crossing the Border – Zhaoguan (2018)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Whatcha Want
Whatcha Want, a hip-hop-infused drama from award-winning Vancouverite Mina Shum (Meditation Park), sees a restless trophy wife from Hong Kong rise above her wealthy husband’s infidelity by rekindling her passion for dance.
James McNeill Whistler
One of America’s greatest artists, James McNeill Whistler fashioned his life as a work of art in its own right. James McNeill Whistler looks beyond his famous portraits and self-styled “nocturnes” to dive into the true depths of Whistler’s legacy.
Let Them Be Seen
Let Them Be Seen is an absurdist portrait of the town of Tapoleng in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, moving through churches, spaza shops, and a Jam Alley re-enactment to document a village reshaping faith and community in post-apartheid life.
Yugo Goes to America
In Yugo Goes to America, millennials from Belgrade drive a Yugo — Yugoslavia’s notoriously unreliable vehicle — from New York to Los Angeles. Their freewheeling road trip traces the car’s volatile history alongside the breakup of Yugoslavia itself.
Elephants in the Fog
In a remote Nepalese village, Pirati takes charge in the search for a missing girl belonging to her family of third-gender Kinnar women. A densely atmospheric thriller and a moving portrait of an embattled but resilient community.