MAMA

This film originates from personal memories long buried in my heart, looking back at the everyday life and quiet tragedy of my mother’s final seven days in a mountain village of Southwest China during the 1990s. Through a restrained and observational lens, I chose not to magnify sorrow, but rather to ground individual destiny within the mountains and rural soil, bearing witness to the living realities of ordinary village women of that era.Within those seven days, new lives arrived as others departed—impermanence, after all, is woven into life itself. Through the eyes of twelve-year-old Xiaoxian, I reconstruct this dusty past not only to remember my late mother, but to find a long-overdue reconciliation with my younger self.Foregoing deliberate dramatic conflicts, I worked with non-professional actors to preserve life in its rawest, most authentic form. This is more than a record of one family’s grief; it is my hope that countless women who, like my mother, lived in silence, may finally be seen and remembered.