China

Gongbo is an ordinary peasant living in Tibet whose life is simple and plain. He works, provides for the whole family and raises children. Just like anyone else living in the world, Gongbo has to sustain various pressures from the life, such as his expectation of another son after his wife’s bearing six daughters consistently, his anxiety for the debt due to the bank for buying a tractor and his disappointment on his son who did not derive enough money as expected from out of towns.

However, Gongbo will never be overwhelmed by these troubles since the life is bringing him friends, the enjoyment of sunlight and the calmness of the night. Gongbo appreciates to the nature and the life, which can be recognized and felt from his face and his songs. If happy life represents hope and satisfaction, and if happiness only means the fulfilled heart and the calmness from the deep inside, Gongbo is happy.

Wulubutie is an Oroqen settlement in the northern reaches of Inner Mongolia; the name means “Lost Mountain” in the Oroqen language.

Gelibao, an Oroqen hunter, runs a horse farm in the mountains of Wulubutie, where he raises 100 horses in the old way. Though hunting has been outlawed, Gelibao will sometimes go out into the mountains on a hunt, more in remembrance of his culture than to sustain himself. Gelibao’s son, Liang Liang, and his friends are still children of the forest, but tend more towards modern entertainment, like the cross-country motorcycle race that they have organized. In this way they vent the frustration of an interrupted youth.

“Lost Mountain” follows Gelibao and his son’s generation, and the mystery of a dead horse.

The first documentary about hospice care in China. Hospice care is usually called palliative care because of cultural taboos in China. In the hospice care center of Lukang, Hangzhou, there are more than 60 patients, but over 20 patients will be gone in a year’s time. Most of them cannot be cured. Their family members sent them here to ease their pains and let them go with comfort and dignity.

Fengshui is to say using winds to gain water. The earth is mother, and burial brings peace to the deceased, symbolizing reincarnation. So the name of this story in English is “Revive,” which means getting into the cycle of reincarnation.

Set in the high plateau of eastern Tibet, Drokpa is an intimate portrait of the lives and struggles of Tibetan nomads whose life is on the cusp of irreversible change. Richly observed daily lives and family relationships, especially those of Tamku, a teenage single mother, Dhongya, a senior nomad, and Yithan, a mother of two boys, are at once deeply personal and illustrative of universal issues of gender, freedom, adaptation to a changing climate, and the resilience of the human spirit.