Tong Meimei's father committed suicide when she was three, then she lost her husband in a car incident when she entered middle age. Sunteck Yao was raped by a stranger when he was 12 years old hiding from the rain, he has isolated himself ever since. For them, life is an infinite extension of pain. When the film crew came into their lives, old wounds were torn apart, the director was forced to reflect on the ethics of the film and himself.

Hao Zhou is a documentary filmmaker who has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, producing documentaries since 2001. Zhou’s works have won awards and been screened at film festivals around the world more than a hundred times. His 2014 film Cotton won Best Documentary at the 51st Golden Horse Film Festival. Zhou’s 2015 film, The Chinese Mayor, won the Special Jury Award for Unparalleled Access at the 31st Sundance Film Festival, as well as Best Documentary at the 9th Asian Film Awards, and won Zhou the Best Documentary award for the second time in a row at the 52nd Golden Horse Film Festival. In 2020, he was invited by the academy to join Oscar voters.

Shan He is a documentary producer who has many years of experience working with the CCTV and other governmental institutions and state-owned companies. She’s good at developing new projects and production management.++Selected work: Line Producer, ‘The Emperor’, Documentary series, CCTV; Production manager, ‘Famen Temple’, Documentary series, CCTV; WIP: ‘Girlhood’, Documentary feature; ‘Wuhan Factory’, Documentary feature; ‘The Time and I’, Documentary series.

festival@parallaxchina.com