‘Always’ review: CPH: DOX winner is a poetic meditation on growing up in rural China

Dir: Deming Chen. China/US/France. 2025. 89 minutes.

In a tiny mountain village in Sangzhi county, on the northern border of Hunan province, a instructor evokes a category of younger youngsters to jot down Chinese language poetry. One of many college students is presented eight year-old Gong Youbin, who finds in his writing and his creativeness an escape from the poverty and loneliness of his upbringing. Harnessing the unexpectedly refined verses written by Youbin and several other different youngsters, Deming Chen’s lyrical documentary absorbs the slow-burning rhythms and inventive inspirations of rural life; this handsomely shot coming-of-age image shadows Youbin over a number of years as his youngster’s desires step by step give technique to an grownup’s realities.

A daring visible strategy which mirrors the poetic parts of the subject material.

The winner of the CPH:DOX prime prize, the DOX Award, this meditative, observational movie needs to be a title of curiosity for additional festivals; crucial assist and phrase of mouth may tempt audiences into cinemas too – strikingly photographed by director Chen, that is actually an image that repays a giant display screen viewing. That is his second function documentary from Chen afrer Tune Of Shiratori (2021) This isn’t the primary movie to discover the challenges confronted by a youthful technology in an remoted rural existence – there’s widespread floor between At all times and Liu Feifang’s The Fading Village (2019) – however the usage of poetry elevates the image. By verse, the youngsters are capable of finding the phrases to talk eloquently about their lives, utilizing phrases that are inclined to elude them in typical interviews and conversations.

Chen’s daring visible strategy mirrors the poetic parts of the subject material. The movie switches forwards and backwards between widescreen color cinematography, and the luminous black-and-white academy ratio materials that makes up nearly all of the footage. The predominantly locked photographs linger on empty landscapes; on leaves teased by the wind; on the misty forested flanks of the mountains – imagery that evokes the younger poets, cropping up repeatedly within the verses which can be displayed on display screen in Chinese language calligraphy. Music is so low-key and minimal that it’s nearly subliminal, however the movie’s use of sound, drawn from the pure world that surrounds the village, is immersive.

Youbin lives along with his grandparents and his father in a modest single-storey farmhouse. He by no means knew his mom, who deserted the household when her youngster was three months outdated after Youbin’s father misplaced his hand in an accident. Youbin’s frail, wizened grandmother is brutally crucial of her son, dismissing his probabilities of discovering one other spouse with: “Get married once more? He can barely make ends meet.”. Youbin’s father grins and smokes and says little or no. However the entire household is united of their pleasure in Youbin’s educational achievements, regaling a social employee who’s assessing the household for particular help with the small print of Youbin’s wonderful outcomes.

In the meantime Youbin splits his time between taking part in within the fields – he builds dens and catches a mouse among the many stubble of final yr’s corn crops to maintain as a pet, a lot to the joy of the household’s cat – and learning on a low chair, repurposed as a desk.

However step by step, because the movie unfolds, there’s a shift within the focus of his time, and Youbin takes his place within the discipline alongside his father and grandfather. The poetry more and more takes a again seat as Youbin, exhausted from bodily labour, prefers to spend his spare time catching up on his sleep. Within the last verse included within the movie, titled ’Farewell’, Youbin poignantly acknowledges that childhood has come to an finish, and his poetry has died with it.